Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

First-author gender differentials in business journal publishing: top journals versus the rest

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Prior literature suggests that the publication rates of female academics are less than the publication rates of male academics. This holds true in nearly every academic field and in every region, but these differences are declining over time. Women also are underrepresented in the first-author byline position. This study examines academics working and publishing in different business disciplines, and it addresses three distinct topics. It investigates (1) whether there is a relationship between the gender of first-listed authors of articles published and the ranking of journals; (2) it considers the relationship between the gender of the first-listed author of articles and different disciplines within business, specifically accounting, business technology, marketing, and organizational behavior; and (3) it evaluates how the publication rates of the two genders of first authors change over a 20-year period (1999–2018) for different disciplines. This research demonstrates that the gender gap is closing for female first authors in business academics, but that parity has not yet been reached. Women continue to be published less frequently in first-author positions in journals across all business disciplines studied, but especially in the higher-ranked journals, albeit with significant differences between business academic disciplines.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. In fields where the convention is to order alphabetically, the first author position is a simple random sample. In fields where the norm is to order by author contribution, women are likely under-represented in the first author position simply because there are fewer women professors of all ranks with lower percentages as rank increases (McChesney and Bichsel 2020). However, given that these ordering conventions have not changed with time for any of the disciplines studied (Joanis and Patil 2021), findings based upon year over year changes are unaffected by this underrepresentation.

  2. Alternative methodologies to determine “Top” and “Other” journals were assessed, including assessing the “Top” and “Other” journals of today and assessing them retrospectively back in time—the issue with this methodology (and all others assessed) is that for the business disciplines studied, many of the journals of today did not exist 20 years ago, and many of the journals of 20 years ago do not exist today.

  3. If an article is published in a top journal, it would have a value of 1 for the HighRank variable and a value of 0 for the LowRank variable. Similarly, if an article is published in a journal not considered a top journal, it would have a value of 0 for the HighRank variable and a value of 1 for the LowRank variable. In no cases would both HighRank and LowRank be included as variables in the same regression since this would violate regression assumptions.

  4. The rationale for using the year 2011 as the division year between NewArticle and OldArticle is discussed in “Hypothesis 4” section. below.

  5. All of the analyses conducted in this research have categorical independent variables with the dependent variable measured in percent. This leads to a relatively simple interpretation of all regression coefficients. When considered in percentage terms, the regression coefficients can be viewed as the percentage point increase in the percentage of female first authors predicted for the variable being assessed. In this case, using Analysis 1 of Table 3, the first author is predicted to be female 23.78% of the time for high ranked journals. Because the coefficient for low ranked journals is 0.0370, this coefficient value can be viewed in percentage terms (3.70%) and added to 23.78% for a prediction of female first authorship position of 27.48%. This methodology is applied throughout this manuscript.

References

  • Abramo, G., Cicero, T., & D’Angelo, C. (2015). Should the research performance of scientists be distinguished by gender? Journal of Informetrics, 9(1), 25–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Abramo, G., D’Angelo, C. A., & Caprasecca, A. (2009). The contribution of star scientists to sex differences in research productivity. Scientometrics, 81(1), 137–156.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alderman, J. (2021). Women in the smart machine age: Addressing emerging risks of an increased gender gap in the accounting profession. Journal of Accounting Education, 55, 100715.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amoroso, S., & Audretsch, D. (2020). The role of gender in linking external sources of knowledge and R&D intensity. Economics of Innovation and New Technology.

  • Astegiano, J., Sebastián-González, E., & Castanho, C. (2019). Unravelling the gender productivity gap in science: A meta-analytical review. Royal Society Open Science, 6(6), 181566.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Astin, H., & Davis, D. (2019). Research productivity across the life and career cycles: Facilitators and barriers for women. In Scholarly writing & publishing. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baker, M. (2010). Career confidence and gendered expectations of academic promotion. Journal of Sociology, 46(3), 317–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bhandari, M., Guyatt, G., Kulkarni, A., Devereaux, P., Leece, P., Bajammal, S., & Busse, J. (2014). Perceptions of authors’ contributions are influenced by both byline order and designation of corresponding author. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 67(9), 1049–1054.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Biehl, M., Kim, H., & Wade, M. (2006). Relationships among the academic business disciplines: A multi-method citation analysis. Omega, 34(4), 359–371.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, C., Fenton, E., & Walker, J. (2014). Gender and the evaluation of research. Research Policy, 43(6), 990–1001.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casadevall, A., Semenza, G., Jackson, S., Tomaselli, G., & Ahima, R. (2019). Reducing bias: Accounting for the order of co–first authors. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 129(6), 2167–2168.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, Y., Nixon, M., Gupta, A., & Hoshower, L. (2010). Research productivity of accounting faculty: An exploratory study. American Journal of Business Education, 3, 101–115.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciminello, F., & Eloy, J. (2014). Research productivity and gender disparities: A look at academic plastic surgery. Journal of Surgical Education, 71(4), 593–600.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Falagas, M., Pitsouni, E., Malietzis, G., & Pappas, G. (2008). Comparison of PubMed, scopus, web of science, and google scholar: Strengths and weaknesses. The FASEB Journal, 22(2), 338–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Forliano, C., De Bernardi, P., & Yahiaoui, D. (2021). Entrepreneurial universities: a bibliometric analysis within the business and management domains. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 165, 120522.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ghosh, P., & Liu, Z. (2020). Coauthorship and the gender gap in top economics journal publications. Applied Economics Letters, 27(7), 580–590.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gingras, Y., & Khelfaoui, M. (2018). Assessing the effect of the United States’“citation advantage” on other countries’ scientific impact as measured in the Web of Science (WoS) database. Scientometrics, 114(2), 517–532.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ginther, D., & Kahn, S. (2021). Women in Academic Economics: Have We Made Progress?. In AEA Papers and Proceedings (Vol. 111, pp. 138–42).

  • Guerrero-Bote, V., & Moya-Anegón, F. (2012). A further step forward in measuring journals’ scientific prestige: The SJR2 indicator. Journal of Informetrics, 6(4), 674–688.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, J., & Wänke, M. (2009). Liking what’s familiar: The importance of unconscious familiarity in the mere-exposure effect. Social Cognition, 27(2), 161–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hengel, E., & Moon, E. (2019). “Gender and Quality at Top Economic Journals.” Working paper: https://erinhengel.github.io/Gender-Quality/quality.pdf

  • Joanis, S., & Patil, V. (2021). Alphabetical ordering of author surnames in academic publishing: A detriment to teamwork. PLoS ONE, 16(5), 251–276.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kogovšek, M., & Kogovšek, M. (2017). Academic seniority and research productivity exploring gender as a moderator. Quaestus, 10, 177–188.

    Google Scholar 

  • König, C. (2019). How much is research in the top journals of industrial/organizational psychology dominated by authors from the US? Scientometrics, 120(3), 1147–1161.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kou, M., Zhang, Y., Zhang, Y., Chen, K., Guan, J., & Xia, S. (2020). Does gender structure influence R&D efficiency? A Regional Perspective. Scientometrics, 122(1), 477–501.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lerchenmueller, M., & Sorenson, O. (2018). The gender gap in early career transitions in the life sciences. Research Policy, 47(6), 1007–1017.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Long, J. (1992). Measures of sex differences in scientific productivity. Social Forces, 71(1), 159–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lundine, J., Bourgeault, I., Clark, J., Heidari, S., & Balabanova, D. (2018). The gendered system of academic publishing. The Lancet, 391(10132), 1754–1756.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lutter, M., & Schröder, M. (2020). Is there a motherhood penalty in academia? The gendered effect of children on academic publications in German sociology. European Sociological Review, 36(3), 442–459.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lynn, F., Noonan, M., Sauder, M., & Andersson, M. (2019). A rare case of gender parity in academia. Social Forces, 98(2), 518–547.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maddi, A., & Gingras, Y. (2020). Gender diversity in research teams and citation impact in Economics and Management. arXiv, 2011.14823.

  • Mañana-Rodríguez, J. (2015). A critical review of SCImago Journal and country rank. Research Evaluation, 24(4), 343–354.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maphalala, M., & Mpofu, N. (2017). Are we there yet? A literature study of the challenges of women academics in institutions of higher education. Gender and Behaviour, 15(2), 9216–9224.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathews, A., & Andersen, K. (2001). A gender gap in publishing? Women’s representation in edited political science books. Political Science & Politics, 34(1), 143–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McChesney, J., & Bichsel, J. (2020). The Aging of Tenure-Track Faculty in Higher Education: Implications for Succession and Diversity. College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

  • Mittal, V., Feick, L., & Murshed, F. (2008). Publish and prosper: The financial impact of publishing by marketing faculty. Marketing Science, 27(3), 430–442.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mongeon, P., & Paul-Hus, A. (2016). The journal coverage of web of science and scopus: A comparative analysis. Scientometrics, 106(1), 213–228.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nielsen, M. (2017). Gender and citation impact in management research. Journal of Informetrics, 11(4), 1213–1228.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Brien, K., & Hapgood, K. (2012). The academic jungle: Ecosystem modelling reveals why women are driven out of research. Oikos, 121(7), 999–1004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Patil, V. (2014). Identification of influential marketing scholars and their institutions using social network analysis. Journal of Marketing Analytics, 2(4), 239–249.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Potter, H., Higgins, G., & Gabbidon, S. (2011). The influence of gender, race/ethnicity, and faculty perceptions on scholarly productivity in criminology/criminal justice. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 22(1), 84–101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R Core Team (2019). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/.

  • Reed, D., Enders, F., Lindor, R., McClees, M., & Lindor, K. (2011). Gender differences in academic productivity and leadership appointments of physicians throughout academic careers. Academic Medicine, 86(1), 43–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reisenberg, D., & Lundberg, G. (1990). The order of authorship: Who’s on first? JAMA, 14(264), 1857.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santamaría, L., & Mihaljević, H. (2018). Comparison and benchmark of name-to-gender inference services. PeerJ Computer Science, 4, E156.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sebo, P., Maisonneuve, H., & Fournier, J. P. (2020). Gender gap in research: A bibliometric study of published articles in primary health care and general internal medicine. Family Practice, 37(3), 325–331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Süßenbacher, S., Amering, M., Gmeiner, A., & Schrank, B. (2017). Gender-gaps and glass ceilings: A survey of gender-specific publication trends in psychiatry between 1994 and 2014. European Psychiatry, 44, 90–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Symonds, M., Gemmell, N., Braisher, T., Gorringe, K., & Elga, M. (2006). Gender differences in publication output: Towards an unbiased metric of research performance. PLoS ONE, 1(1), 127–143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tennant, J. (2020). Web of science and scopus are not global databases of knowledge. European Science Editing, 46, e51987.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M., & Sud, P. (2020). Greater female first author citation advantages do not associate with reduced or reducing gender disparities in academia. Quantitative Science Studies, 1(3), 1283–1297.

  • Tougas, C., Valtanen, R., Bajwa, A., & Beck, J. (2020). Gender of presenters at orthopaedic meetings reflects gender diversity of society membership. Journal of Orthopaedics, 19, 212–217.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Dijk, D., Manor, O., & Carey, L. (2014). Publication metrics and success on the academic job market. Current Biology, 24(11), 516–517.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • West, J., Jacquet, J., King, M., Correll, S., & Bergstrom, C. (2013). The role of gender in scholarly authorship. PloS one, 8(7), e66212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weisshaar, K. (2017). Publish and perish? An assessment of gender gaps in promotion to tenure in academia. Social Forces, 96(2), 529–560.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wren, J., Kozak, K., Johnson, K., Deakyne, S., Schilling, L., & Dellavalle, R. (2007). The write position: A survey of perceived contributions to papers based on byline position and number of authors. EMBO Reports, 8(11), 988–991.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zajonc, R. (2001). Mere exposure: A gateway to the subliminal. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(6), 224–228.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhu, J., & Liu, W. (2020). A tale of two databases: The use of Web of Science and Scopus in academic papers. Scientometrics, 123(1), 321–335.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Finance, Heider College of Business, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA

    Steven T. Joanis

  2. School of Business Administration, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, USA

    Vivek H. Patil

Authors
  1. Steven T. Joanis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Vivek H. Patil
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Conceptualization: STJ; Methodology: STJ and VHP; Formal analysis and investigation: STJ; Writing—original draft preparation: STJ; Writing—review and editing: STJ and VHP; Supervision: VHP.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Steven T. Joanis.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Code availability

All R code is available upon request.

Data availability

All data is available upon request.

Appendix

Appendix

Certain analyses in this study rely on interaction variables including the age of a journal article as one of the multipliers in the interation, specifically the analyses associated with Hypothesis 4 (shown in Tables 5, 6, 7 and 8). One of the multipliers in these interaction variables is a categorical value of article age, and can either be NewArticle and OldArticle, with a 1 indicating membership (and a 0 otherwise). In the case of the analysis associated with Hypothesis 4, NewArticle was defined as those articles from 2012 and later, and OldArticle being those articles from 2011 and earlier. This division was determined by the year in which the Year variable went from significant to not significant in the analysis associated with Hypothesis 3 (see Table 4, Analysis 4). Although this division year was not determined arbitrarily, other division dates were investigated in order to determine if the results of the hypothesis testing for Hypothesis 4 were robust to changing the division date determining whether an article was considered a NewArticle or OldArticle. Since the sample period is an even number (20 years), there are two years closest to the midpoint of the sample year range (2008 and 2009). For the purpose of this robustness analysis, the same analyses performed in Tables 5, 6, 7 and 8 above were replicated with these two new division years, and the results were compared to the 2011 division year from the Hypothesis 4 analysis. For brevity, only Analysis 1 from each of the Tables 5, 6, 7 and 8 are shown in Tables 11, 12, 13 and 14 below.

Table 11 Accounting: OLS regressions with interaction variables and different old article/new article cutoff—dependent variable: first author female publishing rate
Full size table
Table 12 Business technology: OLS regressions with interaction variables and different old article/new article cutoff—dependent variable: first author female publishing rate
Full size table
Table 13 Marketing: OLS regressions with interaction variables and different old article/new article cutoff—dependent variable: first author female publishing rate
Full size table
Table 14 Organizational behavior: OLS regressions with interaction variables and different old article/new article cutoff—dependent variable: first author female publishing rate
Full size table

As can be seen in each of the Tables 11, 12, 13 and 14 no conclusions would be changed based upon using 2008, 2009, or 2011 as the division year, since no coefficient signs change and no coefficients become significant that were formerly insignificant, with the opposite also being the case. Although not shown here, all years between 2007 and 2013 were assessed with consistent results. We conclude, therefore, that the Hypothesis 4 results are robust to the division year determining the difference between NewArticle and OldArticle.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Joanis, S.T., Patil, V.H. First-author gender differentials in business journal publishing: top journals versus the rest. Scientometrics 127, 733–761 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04235-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04235-z

Keywords

JEL Classification

Mathematics Subject Classification

Search

Navigation