Citation inequity and gendered citation practices in contemporary physics

Abstract

The under-attribution of women’s contributions to scientific scholarship is well known and well studied. One measure of this under-attribution is the citation gap between men and women: the under-citation of papers authored by women relative to expected rates coupled with an over-citation of papers authored by men relative to expected rates. Here we explore this citation gap in contemporary physics. We find a global bias wherein papers authored by women are significantly under-cited, and papers authored by men are significantly over-cited. Moreover, we find that citation behaviour varies along several dimensions, such that imbalances differ according to who is citing, where they are citing and what they are citing. Specifically, citation imbalance in favour of man-authored papers is highest for papers authored by men, papers published in general physics journals and papers for which citing authors probably have less domain or author familiarity. Our results suggest that although deciding which papers to cite is an individual choice, the cumulative effects of these choices needlessly harm a subset of scholars. We discuss several strategies for the mitigation of these effects, including conscious behavioural changes at the individual, journal and community levels.