January 29, 2020 • 26 mins
In this episode, we consider the sobering results of a recent study which shows that women researchers are around 20% less likely than men to author invited commentaries for scholarly journals – even when they have the same level of experience as their male peers. Incredibly, this figure rises to 40% for more senior female scientists. Join Anita de Waard as she explores the study with two of the authors, Emma Thomas and Bamini Jayabalasingham, in an attempt to explore some of the factors attributing to their findings and the impact the results have on the larger research landscape.
SHOW NOTES:
Invited commentaries are short articles that provide an author’s personal perspective or view points on a leading, significant or controversial topic. Typically the invited author is a leading expert in the subject matter and usually invited by the editor. “In medical journals, publication of an invited commentary is a recognition of expertise and can raise an author’s profile.” (Emma Thomas in Women scientists author fewer invited commentaries in medical journals than men with comparable credentials)
Articles mentioned in the podcast:
- Original study referenced in this episode: Gender Disparities in Invited Commentary Authorship in 2459 Medical Journals
- Referenced Holman et al article: The gender gap in science: How long until women are equally represented
Related articles and interesting reads:
- I thought patriarchy in science was fading. Then I saw it in the data
- Women scientists author fewer invited commentaries in medical journals than men with comparable credentials
- We have a responsibility. Elsevier's Holly Falk-Krzesinski on gender equality in research
NOW AVAILABLE! The Elsevier Gender Report 2020
Gender disparity and bias in research, as explored in this podcast episode, negatively affect the breadth and impact of research, and the opportunities for researchers to advance in their careers. In order to understand this impact and overcome barriers, the global research community must closely examine the critical issues using an evidence-based approach.
Elsevier has an ongoing commitment to promoting gender diversity and advancing gender equity in global research. On March 5, 2020, we published The researcher journey through a gender lens: A global examination of research participation, career progression and perceptions. This is our third report on gender and research.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Music (00:00):
[ music].
Mancini (00:06):
Hi, I'm Giacomo Mancini.
Welcome to research 2030 anElsevier podcast series in which
guests from academia and beyondjoin us in exploring, debating
and challenging the changingresearch landscape.
In this episode titled, don'tblame it on the pipeline, we
consider the sobering results ofa recent study which showed that
women researchers are around 20%less likely than men to author
(00:30):
invited commentaries forscholarly journals.
Even when they have the samelevel of experience as their
male peers.
Incredibly, this figure rises to40% for more senior female
scientists.
This research builds uponprevious findings that same
gender preferences can influencewhich articles peer reviewers
approve, who editors choose toconduct those peer reviews, who
(00:53):
authors cite in their articlesand who we choose as coauthors
and collaborators.
In fact, it's becomingincreasingly clear that bias,
both conscious and unconsciouspermeates many aspects of the
research and publishing cycle.
At the same time, we seemounting evidence that improving
diversity and research, not juststriving for balance between men
(01:15):
and women, but between age,racial and ethnic groups
delivers a host of positivebenefits from better patient
outcomes to improve decisionmaking.
And just what are the factorsdriving this gender inequality?
Are there steps that publishers,research leaders and researchers
with themselves can take tobridge the diversity divide?
In Don't blame it on thepipeline.
(01:37):
We attempt to answer thesequestions with the help of two
of the study's authors, EmmaThomas, a doctoral student in
the department of biostatisticsat Harvard T H Chan school of
public health, and BaminiJayabalasingham, the senior
analytical services productmanager at Elsevier.
They are interviewed by ourguest host for this episode.
Elsevier is vice president ofresearch collaborations, Anita
(01:58):
de Waard.
Music (02:02):
[inaudible].
de Waard (02:04):
I am joined today by two people who have written an
incredibly interesting andimportant review on gender in
science and I would love forthem to introduce themselves.
Emma, could you introduceyourself first please?
What's your background show?
Thomas (02:19):
Sure, so my name's Emma Thomas.
I'm originally from Australia.
I have undergrad degree in mathand a master's in science from
Australia and after I finishedmy masters I moved here to the U
S to do my PhD in bio statisticsat the Harvard T H Chan school
of public health.
So I've been working onquantitative things for a long
(02:39):
time and I've also been workingon problems in health and
medicine.
So combining my statistical andmathematical skills and applying
them to interesting questions inhealth and medicine.
de Waard (02:49):
Thanks so much.
Bamini could you introduceyourself?
Jayabalasingham (02:53):
Sure.
My name is BaminiJayabalasingham.
I have a background inmicrobiology and immunology.
I did a PhD in public health,um, the topic of autophagy and
malaria almost more than 10years ago now and have since
moved to Elsevier through apretty circuitous route and
(03:17):
working on data analyses tosupport research administrators
and funders in making strategicdecisions in their portfolio.
de Waard (03:27):
Fantastic.
So you have differentbackgrounds.
So what led you to pick thistopic?
I guess I'll ask Emma first.
Thomas (03:34):
This topic is something that my advisor, dr Francesca
Domenici, was very interested insomething like invited
commentaries obviously becausethey're invited, typically
they're going to invite someonewho's very senior and well known
if they have the opportunity todo that.
So this is kind of an issue thatin some ways affects more senior
researchers like Francesca.
But I think it was interestingto me as well because there is
(03:57):
kind of a trickle down effect tojunior researchers.
So if you look at, you know, thekind of high profile invited
articles that are being writtenand a huge percentage of them
are written by men, which theyare, I think that definitely
affects your mindset.
So I feel like it was somethingthat impacts my life as well.
de Waard (04:14):
Mm.
That's interesting.
Um, and Bamani maybe for thoselisteners out there who don't
know what an invited commentaryis, could, could you give a
little bit of an explanation on,on the specific topic for the
study?
Jayabalasingham (04:25):
So an invited commentary is sometimes when a
journal has a paper that theythink is going to be really
important to the field or juststands out for some reason or
another, the editors will invitea commentary on the article from
someone who is well known in thefield to identify those invited
(04:48):
commentaries for our report.
We decided to look for articlesthat cite articles within the
same journal and issue deducethat a person wouldn't be able
to cite an article within thesame journal an issue unless it
had been given to them to site.
de Waard (05:05):
Okay.
There are articles aboutarticles in a journal and I was
just wondering, have either ofyou ever written an invited
commentary?
Thomas (05:14):
I haven't.
Like I said, usually it's, it'smore senior, more established
researchers who gets to writethis kind of thing.
So not yet, but there's stilltime.
de Waard (05:23):
How about you Bamini
Jayabalasingham (05:25):
I've been in labs where the postdocs or grad
students have been asked to, youknow, basically write, draft the
commentary or on behalf of thePI who was, you know, first
author and was the one who wasactually asked.
I personally haven't been asked,but I was in a lab where those
who are asked were always men.
(05:49):
I thought this was really aninteresting topic just aside
from the invited commentarypart, but also who in the lab
gets asked to support it becauseit's a, it's a good way to raise
your visibility.
People may not read the wholearticle, they'll, they'll read
the article or maybe parts ofit, but they'll always read the
(06:10):
commentary because it's theeasier version to digest.
de Waard (06:14):
Wow.
Right.
So, so yeah.
Bamini, if you could justbriefly recap the research
question and, and, and then whatyou found, that'd be, that'd be
very interesting.
Jayabalasingham (06:24):
Sure.
Well, why don't I present alittle bit how we approach the
problem and I'll let Emmadiscuss what was found.
de Waard (06:31):
That sounds perfect.
Jayabalasingham (06:33):
The question was, is there a gender bias in
who is asked to write invitedcommentaries.
And we approached this questionusing data on who is actually
authoring these articles butalso identifying potential
candidates who could bealternatives asked based on
(06:54):
their expertise, which weidentified using Elsevier as
expert look up technology.
Thomas (07:00):
So as Bamini said, we basically wanted to compare
authors of invited commentariesto other people who plausibly
could have written the invitedcommentary and then look at the
gender ratios between the twogroups.
So actually the first step asBamini mentioned before, was to
identify the articles, which wedid using this amazing idea that
Bamini came up with to look forarticles that cite another
(07:21):
article within the same journaland issue.
And that was really importantidea because it allowed us to
use the mechanics of Scopus tosuch these articles in an
automated way, whereaspreviously there is no clear
tags for these articles, so itwas hard to identify them.
And that allowed us to get areally nice big sample size.
We had over 60,000 articles inour final data set.
(07:43):
And the first step that we tookwas to just look at the
percentage of those articlesthat were authored by women.
And what we found was that itwas about 23% so not a high
number.
It's women are definitelyunderrepresented as authors of
invited commentaries.
And that was something that wasactually known before we
undertook this research.
So some people had looked inparticular journals and found
(08:03):
that women were underrepresented, but what wasn't
known was taking the first stepsto explain why we see that gap.
So I think what many people hadpreviously assumed was that
women write fewer invitedcommentaries because there are
fewer women with sufficientexpertise and seniority and
experience to be writing thosecommentaries.
We still know that there's agender gap in science and at the
(08:25):
top it's particularlypronounced.
So if you just assume there arefewer women who have the
qualifications to write thesecommentaries, of course you
expect there to be fewer womenwriting the commentaries
themselves.
So what we did was to actuallyuse the expert lookup tool that
Bamini mentioned to compare menand women who had expertise in
the same field but not only,that also had been publishing in
(08:47):
that field for the same lengthof time and had similar
publication metrics.
So it was similar numbers ofpublications and a similar H
index, which is a measure ofyour citation impact in your
field.
And what we found was that whenyou compare men and women who
were essentially peers in termsof their qualifications, women
were still about 22% less likelyto author an invited commentary.
(09:08):
So that says that the agenda gapcan't actually be explained by
the fact that there are justmore men who are qualified to
write those commentaries.
There's something else that'sgoing on.
de Waard (09:17):
Wow.
Were you surprised by thatfinding Bamini for instance?
Yeah,
Jayabalasingham (09:21):
I think, yeah, I was surprised, because I think
the thing we tell ourselves or Itell myself is that the reason
that it's the same people I didwas because in the more senior
levels, most of the people I'veseen have been men.
But it seems like, you know, ifI, the effort was taken, you
(09:42):
could also identify senior womenwould could be be just as likely
to, you know, or just asqualified to write the
commentary.
Thomas (09:51):
Yeah.
I think I suffered from thatsame assumption that you kind of
hope that it's a pipeline issue,meaning that there just aren't
as many women at the top whohave the experience yet to be
writing these articles.
And then if we just wait longenough, more women will progress
through the pipeline and become,you know, these expert
researches and thereforethere'll be more women writing
(10:11):
invited commentaries.
But our results suggest thatthat might not be the case, that
even if you had women with thesame level of qualifications as
men, they'd still be, you knowabout 22% less likely to write
an invited commentary.
[Wow] So I think that issurprising.
de Waard (10:26):
Yeah, it's a little discouraging.
Is this...
Do you feel that this is a trendthat is changing at all?
It almost you would hope it wasbut, but is that something that
your data supports?
Thomas (10:36):
Our data doesn't support that necessarily because we
didn't look at time trends.
We just took a recent block oftime, which was 2013 to 2017 to
try and get something that wasrelevant for what editors and
journals, the decisions theywere making now.
But there have been otherarticles that have looked at
time trends in gender ratios.
There's one paper in particularby Holeman et al, I think it was
(10:56):
published in 2018 in PlosBiology we cited in our paper.
And that's a really beautifulanalysis where they looked at
trends in the proportion ofwomen authoring articles in
different fields over time.
And they actually tried toproject how long it would take
to get to the point of genderparity in different fields.
And I think they found that therate of change in the percentage
(11:18):
of women authors was somethinglike between zero and 2% in most
fields.
And that meant that in somecases, you know where maybe five
years from gender parity and inother cases we're still decades
from gender parity.
So it's changing, but it may notbe changing fast enough.
de Waard (11:34):
We'll make sure to put the links, by the way, to your
article and to the article thatyou're quoting here together
with the podcast so that peoplewho are listening can find them
easily.
So that is a little bitdiscouraging I suppose.
And also surprising andinteresting.
Do you have any thoughts on howthe various players in the
landscape, people such asresearch leaders at
(11:55):
universities, what are some ofthe things that they could do to
, to change this?
Jayabalasingham (12:00):
Well, I mean there are a lot of studies about
interventions and whether theywork or or whether they, they
affect change when it seems thatknowing, knowing the data or
what what's happening, doing anassessment of your implicit bias
helps people know that this is athing and that they're, they
(12:21):
might be part of it but itdoesn't change their behavior
based on the studies I've seen.
I don't know.
I don't know what people can dobecause I think to Emma's point,
like is it participation orgetting parity in participation
is only step one in the processbecause you can have parity or
(12:43):
even over representation ofwomen in some fields, but trends
still continue as they are whereour, maybe our impression is
that a certain kind of person isthe right person to write a
review and we're not aware ofthat, that person also happens
to be, you know, our definitionof that person also happens to
be a man.
(13:04):
I think having targets ormonitoring progress is a good
way to go to see if what you'redoing is making an impact.
Thomas (13:11):
Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
I think using data andmonitoring the situation is
really important.
I think it's easy to kind ofassume in the current climate
where there's a lot ofdiscussion about gender and the
impact agenda that things areimproving, but we really need
data to actually show whetherthat is happening.
And I think, you know journalsand universities are doing that
(13:35):
more and more, but there'sprobably still room for
improvement.
I think the other thing, andthis is more I guess on an
individual level and it's kindof my personal perspective, I
think our research showed, youknow what doesn't cause the
gender gap, which is it's notjust a pipeline issue but we
weren't able to show exactlywhat does cause it and there
probably are a lot of factors,you know, including gender bias
(13:57):
and including the fact thatwomen are more overburdened
outside of their research andtherefore have less time to
commit to things like invitedcommentaries.
But I think something else thatmight be going on is that the
connections we have with oneanother as researchers tend to
be a little more based on who islike us.
So men tend to have moreprofessional connections with
(14:20):
men and in many cases women havemore professional connections
with women, but there are moremen in positions of power.
And so that leads to kind of anentrenching of the male
advantage.
And so I think one thing that wecan all do is to try and
diversify our professional andresearch connections as much as
possible.
(14:41):
And yeah, I think that's kind ofeasier said than done.
But I think if we make aconscious effort to reach out to
others who might not be like usor to look for, you know,
offering opportunities to peoplewho are in positions where we
might not have otherwiseconsidered them is a really
important step that we can alltake.
de Waard (14:58):
So that's, so that's really for everyone at every
level you would say.
Thomas (15:02):
Yeah, I think so.
Particularly people in positionsof privilege, those so research
leaders and people in positionsof power in universities because
they're the ones who are able tooffer the most advantageous
opportunities.
de Waard (15:14):
Right, right.
Jayabalasingham (15:15):
Yeah, and Emma has a really good point.
In there in the gender reportthat's coming out next year and
we did a network analysis andone of the interesting findings
to me anyways was that womentend to network, and
co-authorship networks that aremore composed of women and men
tend to co-author more with men.
It seems really surprising.
(15:36):
But then on the flip side, Ilook at my k ids, m y girls,
they play with girls and youknow, my nieces or nephews, they
play with b oys.
S o we kind of start doing thisearly, so getting over that that
behavior requires some consciouseffort.
de Waard (15:57):
Hmm.
That's, that's an interestingthought.
It's really a fantasticcollaboration and, and a great
paper to read.
I'm not a statistician, but Ifound it fascinating how you
actually worked with all thedata and made, made things so
overwhelmingly clear.
So I was wondering to whatdegree this work has has
impacted your own writing orperhaps other academic efforts.
Jayabalasingham (16:18):
So I am working on a big report for Elsevier on,
you know, the researcher'sjourney through a gender lens it
looks at, participation,contribution networks,
perceptions of women and menwhen it comes to gender.
You know, the impact of genderon different aspects of a
researcher's career.
Having been involved in such arobust analysis with Emma helped
(16:42):
me sort of, suspend doubt on theother datapoints I was working
on because you know, it allbecomes part of this big
literature base.
Thomas (16:52):
Yeah.
I think the issue that I talkedabout before of connection and
diversifying our collaborationsis the one that's kind of
weighed heaviest on mepersonally.
I absolutely don't want tooveremphasize that as the only
thing that explains ourfindings.
I think, you know, gender biasis real and that's definitely
happening as well.
(17:13):
But as something that I can do,I think that's one of the most
important things is to try andconsciously expand my
professional networks.
And it's not something thatcomes naturally to me cause I'm
not, you know, I consider myselfan introvert when I go to
conferences.
I always think I should like,you know, network, make
connections and I just don'twant to do, it really doesn't
(17:34):
come naturally.
But you know, one thing thatreally struck me was I was at a
conference earlier this year,the women in statistics and data
science conference and Ipresented on this research and
there was a moment at the startof the conference where there
was an opening panel and therewere several women on the panel
speaking about their experiencesas data scientists and
(17:54):
statisticians.
And at the end a fellow studentgot up and pointed out the fact
that all of the women on thepanel happened to be white.
And you know, I should say likethe rest of the conference, we
had several wonderful plenaryspeakers who were women of
color.
So it didn't, you know, thatpattern didn't persist, but what
she said really stuck with mebecause I feel like as a student
(18:17):
at Harvard, you know, Idefinitely am influenced by some
amount of lack of diversity andthat it's easy to kind of fall
back on the connections that youhave and that, that entrenches,
that lack of diversity.
And so I think it's reallyincumbent on all of us and, and
I want to try and do it myselfto kind of expand the diversity
of our connections.
de Waard (18:38):
That's, that's a really interesting point.
So do you, this research reallyalso affected how you yourself
move now through your ownacademic networks.
Any thoughts on particularthings that perhaps editors or
journals might be able to do?
You already mentioned knowingmore data would be helpful.
So one question is, do, do folkshave adequate access to the
(19:00):
data?
Is there anything that either weourselves as a publisher or
other publishers or editorscould do to, to support this
diversification?
Jayabalasingham (19:09):
Yeah, I mean I think I go back to having
targets or or monitoring thedata.
You can't change something ifyou don't know or don't think
it's a problem.
So just knowing what the data isand what you're doing relative
to also knowing what could belike what is your available
pool?
(19:30):
How many women could are thereare women or men or whatever are
there that you could have chosenfor this position?
I think that that's the most,that's probably the lowest
hanging fruit action that can betaken
de Waard (19:44):
Just to be aware of all the, all the possible people
you could choose from
Jayabalasingham (19:49):
and to know what you're doing, what you've
been doing so far.
de Waard (19:53):
Right.
That sounds, that soundsextremely sensible.
Emma, any further thoughts?
Thomas (19:58):
I, I do think, you know, invited commentaries is a really
interesting area, partly becauseit's something that editors and
journals do have slightly morecontrol over.
They don't have total controlbecause when they invite
someone, they can't guaranteethat that person will accept.
And one of the things that Ireviewer about paper mentioned
was that they're actually in herexperience that were more women
(20:20):
who declined commentaryinvitations than men.
So I think, you know, supportingwomen to accept these
opportunities when they'reoffered to them and an
understanding, you know, whythey may not be able to except
those opportunities that that'ssomething that should be looked
into more carefully and perhapsgenerals can play a role in
that.
I do think, you know withinvited commentaries, if they
(20:44):
want to enforce a 50 50 gender,they in principle can do that.
I mean they can keep asking youknow, enough women until they
find someone who is able to doit.
de Waard (20:54):
Well, thank you so much.
Any last parting thoughts to ouraudience who have been
listening?
Jayabalasingham (21:00):
I think when it comes to representation, the
goal isn't to just have likeequal numbers of everyone,
right?
The goal is to improve scienceand to have science benefit from
diverse perspectives.
And so that needs not justnumbers of people to be, not
just for you to have equalnumber are not equal, but like
(21:20):
representation of they also needto be able to participate in
various aspects of science andtheir voices need to be heard.
And so editorials are just oneof those ways we think about
gender and science.
I think we had to think abouthow to facilitate participation
(21:40):
and what, what we get out ofthat also in terms of getting
those diverse perspectives.
de Waard (21:48):
Mmm.
Right.
So why does it even matter is agood question to ask.
Jayabalasingham (21:52):
Yeah.
de Waard (21:53):
Yeah.
Thank you.
And Emma, any last thoughts?
Thomas (21:56):
I think I would say that I, I believe strongly in using
the data as we've discussedusing data to its greatest
potential to try and addressthis issue.
I think there's just likeamazingly huge scope for
continued research in this area.
You know, working with Baminiand Tom Collins, he was also,
you know, a crucial part of thisresearch at Elsevier.
(22:19):
It was just like so awesomebecause I got access to this
incredible data set and peoplewith expertise on this
incredible data set and it maybe realized how much scope there
is for continued work in thisarea.
So anyone who has an interestand you know the energy like go
out and do it because I thinkit's really making a difference
(22:40):
on getting people's attention.
de Waard (22:41):
That's fantastic.
And Bamini, you were mentioningyou're working on the next
gender report.
Maybe a few closing words onwhat the timing of that is and
when people can look for it.
Jayabalasingham (22:50):
Yeah, so the launch for that report will be
in mid March.
We're covering a variety oftopics and it builds on the
previous report that wasreleased in 2017 we're looking
at participation of women andmen, their contribution to
research networks that theyform, looking at cohorts, using
(23:12):
cohorts to look at the longevityof their publishing careers and
their mobility.
And then we've also donequalitative analysis.
I understand perceptions relatedto gender and diversity issues
and how they vary acrossdifferent researchers.
de Waard (23:30):
Great.
So there's a lot to to discoverand discuss yet on gender and
the participation of women inboth in in invited commentaries,
but also larger in the academiaand the way that research is is
in the future.
Well, I want to thank you bothso much both for your work
(23:50):
writing this paper and forparticipating in this podcast.
Emma, best of luck on your PhD.
And Bamini, we're, we're verymuch looking forward to the
gender report.
We'll make sure to put links toeverything in in the podcast
page.
Thank you so much for joining.
Jayabalasingham (24:05):
Thanks for having us.
Thomas (24:07):
Thank you.
It was great to have thisconversation.
Music (24:12):
[ music]
Mancini (24:13):
The paper that Emma, Bamini and their coauthors
published makes it clear thatthe under-representation of
female researchers in invitedcommentaries cannot as many
supposed be blamed on a shortageof experienced candidates.
Instead, there are other factorsat play which they suggest range
from gender biases and busyschedules to an over-reliance on
(24:34):
familiar networks.
Their study also makes it clearthat this isn't simply a
pipeline issue that will resolveitself as a new generation of
women take on senior roles.
It requires intervention fromactively looking for women to
invite to supporting femalecolleagues when they receive
that invitation.
In fact, if we don't act now, wemay perpetuate the problem.
(24:56):
Invited commentaries contributeto the visibility that
researchers so desperately needto attract funding,
collaborators and progress intheir careers.
As both Emma and Bamini and youhave highlighted, there are
steps that all of us working inresearch can take to improve the
situation and here data willprove key that will help us
identify potential femalecandidates and allow us to
(25:17):
monitor our progress towardsimproved diversity.
It will also drive further andmuch needed research in this
area.
You will find a link to thearticle in our show notes along
with information on the Elseviergender report titled"The
researcher journey through agender lens" due to be published
in March of 2020 which furtherexplores the role genders play
(25:37):
in a researcher's' career.
Finally, we'd like to expressour gratitude to Emma Thomas and
Bamini Jayabalasingham forjoining us here on Research 2030
and our thanks to Anita de Waardfor hosting this episode.
I'm Giacomo Mancini and thankyou for listening.
Research 2030 is an officialElsevier podcast.
Subscribe now via the usualpodcast channels so you don't
(26:00):
miss a single episode.
[ music].
Mancini (00:06):
Hi, I'm Giacomo Mancini.
Welcome to research 2030 anElsevier podcast series in which
guests from academia and beyondjoin us in exploring, debating
and challenging the changingresearch landscape.
In this episode titled, don'tblame it on the pipeline, we
consider the sobering results ofa recent study which showed that
women researchers are around 20%less likely than men to author
(00:30):
invited commentaries forscholarly journals.
Even when they have the samelevel of experience as their
male peers.
Incredibly, this figure rises to40% for more senior female
scientists.
This research builds uponprevious findings that same
gender preferences can influencewhich articles peer reviewers
approve, who editors choose toconduct those peer reviews, who
(00:53):
authors cite in their articlesand who we choose as coauthors
and collaborators.
In fact, it's becomingincreasingly clear that bias,
both conscious and unconsciouspermeates many aspects of the
research and publishing cycle.
At the same time, we seemounting evidence that improving
diversity and research, not juststriving for balance between men
(01:15):
and women, but between age,racial and ethnic groups
delivers a host of positivebenefits from better patient
outcomes to improve decisionmaking.
And just what are the factorsdriving this gender inequality?
Are there steps that publishers,research leaders and researchers
with themselves can take tobridge the diversity divide?
In Don't blame it on thepipeline.
(01:37):
We attempt to answer thesequestions with the help of two
of the study's authors, EmmaThomas, a doctoral student in
the department of biostatisticsat Harvard T H Chan school of
public health, and BaminiJayabalasingham, the senior
analytical services productmanager at Elsevier.
They are interviewed by ourguest host for this episode.
Elsevier is vice president ofresearch collaborations, Anita
(01:58):
de Waard.
Music (02:02):
[inaudible].
de Waard (02:04):
I am joined today by two people who have written an
incredibly interesting andimportant review on gender in
science and I would love forthem to introduce themselves.
Emma, could you introduceyourself first please?
What's your background show?
Thomas (02:19):
Sure, so my name's Emma Thomas.
I'm originally from Australia.
I have undergrad degree in mathand a master's in science from
Australia and after I finishedmy masters I moved here to the U
S to do my PhD in bio statisticsat the Harvard T H Chan school
of public health.
So I've been working onquantitative things for a long
(02:39):
time and I've also been workingon problems in health and
medicine.
So combining my statistical andmathematical skills and applying
them to interesting questions inhealth and medicine.
de Waard (02:49):
Thanks so much.
Bamini could you introduceyourself?
Jayabalasingham (02:53):
Sure.
My name is BaminiJayabalasingham.
I have a background inmicrobiology and immunology.
I did a PhD in public health,um, the topic of autophagy and
malaria almost more than 10years ago now and have since
moved to Elsevier through apretty circuitous route and
(03:17):
working on data analyses tosupport research administrators
and funders in making strategicdecisions in their portfolio.
de Waard (03:27):
Fantastic.
So you have differentbackgrounds.
So what led you to pick thistopic?
I guess I'll ask Emma first.
Thomas (03:34):
This topic is something that my advisor, dr Francesca
Domenici, was very interested insomething like invited
commentaries obviously becausethey're invited, typically
they're going to invite someonewho's very senior and well known
if they have the opportunity todo that.
So this is kind of an issue thatin some ways affects more senior
researchers like Francesca.
But I think it was interestingto me as well because there is
(03:57):
kind of a trickle down effect tojunior researchers.
So if you look at, you know, thekind of high profile invited
articles that are being writtenand a huge percentage of them
are written by men, which theyare, I think that definitely
affects your mindset.
So I feel like it was somethingthat impacts my life as well.
de Waard (04:14):
Mm.
That's interesting.
Um, and Bamani maybe for thoselisteners out there who don't
know what an invited commentaryis, could, could you give a
little bit of an explanation on,on the specific topic for the
study?
Jayabalasingham (04:25):
So an invited commentary is sometimes when a
journal has a paper that theythink is going to be really
important to the field or juststands out for some reason or
another, the editors will invitea commentary on the article from
someone who is well known in thefield to identify those invited
(04:48):
commentaries for our report.
We decided to look for articlesthat cite articles within the
same journal and issue deducethat a person wouldn't be able
to cite an article within thesame journal an issue unless it
had been given to them to site.
de Waard (05:05):
Okay.
There are articles aboutarticles in a journal and I was
just wondering, have either ofyou ever written an invited
commentary?
Thomas (05:14):
I haven't.
Like I said, usually it's, it'smore senior, more established
researchers who gets to writethis kind of thing.
So not yet, but there's stilltime.
de Waard (05:23):
How about you Bamini
Jayabalasingham (05:25):
I've been in labs where the postdocs or grad
students have been asked to, youknow, basically write, draft the
commentary or on behalf of thePI who was, you know, first
author and was the one who wasactually asked.
I personally haven't been asked,but I was in a lab where those
who are asked were always men.
(05:49):
I thought this was really aninteresting topic just aside
from the invited commentarypart, but also who in the lab
gets asked to support it becauseit's a, it's a good way to raise
your visibility.
People may not read the wholearticle, they'll, they'll read
the article or maybe parts ofit, but they'll always read the
(06:10):
commentary because it's theeasier version to digest.
de Waard (06:14):
Wow.
Right.
So, so yeah.
Bamini, if you could justbriefly recap the research
question and, and, and then whatyou found, that'd be, that'd be
very interesting.
Jayabalasingham (06:24):
Sure.
Well, why don't I present alittle bit how we approach the
problem and I'll let Emmadiscuss what was found.
de Waard (06:31):
That sounds perfect.
Jayabalasingham (06:33):
The question was, is there a gender bias in
who is asked to write invitedcommentaries.
And we approached this questionusing data on who is actually
authoring these articles butalso identifying potential
candidates who could bealternatives asked based on
(06:54):
their expertise, which weidentified using Elsevier as
expert look up technology.
Thomas (07:00):
So as Bamini said, we basically wanted to compare
authors of invited commentariesto other people who plausibly
could have written the invitedcommentary and then look at the
gender ratios between the twogroups.
So actually the first step asBamini mentioned before, was to
identify the articles, which wedid using this amazing idea that
Bamini came up with to look forarticles that cite another
(07:21):
article within the same journaland issue.
And that was really importantidea because it allowed us to
use the mechanics of Scopus tosuch these articles in an
automated way, whereaspreviously there is no clear
tags for these articles, so itwas hard to identify them.
And that allowed us to get areally nice big sample size.
We had over 60,000 articles inour final data set.
(07:43):
And the first step that we tookwas to just look at the
percentage of those articlesthat were authored by women.
And what we found was that itwas about 23% so not a high
number.
It's women are definitelyunderrepresented as authors of
invited commentaries.
And that was something that wasactually known before we
undertook this research.
So some people had looked inparticular journals and found
(08:03):
that women were underrepresented, but what wasn't
known was taking the first stepsto explain why we see that gap.
So I think what many people hadpreviously assumed was that
women write fewer invitedcommentaries because there are
fewer women with sufficientexpertise and seniority and
experience to be writing thosecommentaries.
We still know that there's agender gap in science and at the
(08:25):
top it's particularlypronounced.
So if you just assume there arefewer women who have the
qualifications to write thesecommentaries, of course you
expect there to be fewer womenwriting the commentaries
themselves.
So what we did was to actuallyuse the expert lookup tool that
Bamini mentioned to compare menand women who had expertise in
the same field but not only,that also had been publishing in
(08:47):
that field for the same lengthof time and had similar
publication metrics.
So it was similar numbers ofpublications and a similar H
index, which is a measure ofyour citation impact in your
field.
And what we found was that whenyou compare men and women who
were essentially peers in termsof their qualifications, women
were still about 22% less likelyto author an invited commentary.
(09:08):
So that says that the agenda gapcan't actually be explained by
the fact that there are justmore men who are qualified to
write those commentaries.
There's something else that'sgoing on.
de Waard (09:17):
Wow.
Were you surprised by thatfinding Bamini for instance?
Yeah,
Jayabalasingham (09:21):
I think, yeah, I was surprised, because I think
the thing we tell ourselves or Itell myself is that the reason
that it's the same people I didwas because in the more senior
levels, most of the people I'veseen have been men.
But it seems like, you know, ifI, the effort was taken, you
(09:42):
could also identify senior womenwould could be be just as likely
to, you know, or just asqualified to write the
commentary.
Thomas (09:51):
Yeah.
I think I suffered from thatsame assumption that you kind of
hope that it's a pipeline issue,meaning that there just aren't
as many women at the top whohave the experience yet to be
writing these articles.
And then if we just wait longenough, more women will progress
through the pipeline and become,you know, these expert
researches and thereforethere'll be more women writing
(10:11):
invited commentaries.
But our results suggest thatthat might not be the case, that
even if you had women with thesame level of qualifications as
men, they'd still be, you knowabout 22% less likely to write
an invited commentary.
[Wow] So I think that issurprising.
de Waard (10:26):
Yeah, it's a little discouraging.
Is this...
Do you feel that this is a trendthat is changing at all?
It almost you would hope it wasbut, but is that something that
your data supports?
Thomas (10:36):
Our data doesn't support that necessarily because we
didn't look at time trends.
We just took a recent block oftime, which was 2013 to 2017 to
try and get something that wasrelevant for what editors and
journals, the decisions theywere making now.
But there have been otherarticles that have looked at
time trends in gender ratios.
There's one paper in particularby Holeman et al, I think it was
(10:56):
published in 2018 in PlosBiology we cited in our paper.
And that's a really beautifulanalysis where they looked at
trends in the proportion ofwomen authoring articles in
different fields over time.
And they actually tried toproject how long it would take
to get to the point of genderparity in different fields.
And I think they found that therate of change in the percentage
(11:18):
of women authors was somethinglike between zero and 2% in most
fields.
And that meant that in somecases, you know where maybe five
years from gender parity and inother cases we're still decades
from gender parity.
So it's changing, but it may notbe changing fast enough.
de Waard (11:34):
We'll make sure to put the links, by the way, to your
article and to the article thatyou're quoting here together
with the podcast so that peoplewho are listening can find them
easily.
So that is a little bitdiscouraging I suppose.
And also surprising andinteresting.
Do you have any thoughts on howthe various players in the
landscape, people such asresearch leaders at
(11:55):
universities, what are some ofthe things that they could do to
, to change this?
Jayabalasingham (12:00):
Well, I mean there are a lot of studies about
interventions and whether theywork or or whether they, they
affect change when it seems thatknowing, knowing the data or
what what's happening, doing anassessment of your implicit bias
helps people know that this is athing and that they're, they
(12:21):
might be part of it but itdoesn't change their behavior
based on the studies I've seen.
I don't know.
I don't know what people can dobecause I think to Emma's point,
like is it participation orgetting parity in participation
is only step one in the processbecause you can have parity or
(12:43):
even over representation ofwomen in some fields, but trends
still continue as they are whereour, maybe our impression is
that a certain kind of person isthe right person to write a
review and we're not aware ofthat, that person also happens
to be, you know, our definitionof that person also happens to
be a man.
(13:04):
I think having targets ormonitoring progress is a good
way to go to see if what you'redoing is making an impact.
Thomas (13:11):
Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
I think using data andmonitoring the situation is
really important.
I think it's easy to kind ofassume in the current climate
where there's a lot ofdiscussion about gender and the
impact agenda that things areimproving, but we really need
data to actually show whetherthat is happening.
And I think, you know journalsand universities are doing that
(13:35):
more and more, but there'sprobably still room for
improvement.
I think the other thing, andthis is more I guess on an
individual level and it's kindof my personal perspective, I
think our research showed, youknow what doesn't cause the
gender gap, which is it's notjust a pipeline issue but we
weren't able to show exactlywhat does cause it and there
probably are a lot of factors,you know, including gender bias
(13:57):
and including the fact thatwomen are more overburdened
outside of their research andtherefore have less time to
commit to things like invitedcommentaries.
But I think something else thatmight be going on is that the
connections we have with oneanother as researchers tend to
be a little more based on who islike us.
So men tend to have moreprofessional connections with
(14:20):
men and in many cases women havemore professional connections
with women, but there are moremen in positions of power.
And so that leads to kind of anentrenching of the male
advantage.
And so I think one thing that wecan all do is to try and
diversify our professional andresearch connections as much as
possible.
(14:41):
And yeah, I think that's kind ofeasier said than done.
But I think if we make aconscious effort to reach out to
others who might not be like usor to look for, you know,
offering opportunities to peoplewho are in positions where we
might not have otherwiseconsidered them is a really
important step that we can alltake.
de Waard (14:58):
So that's, so that's really for everyone at every
level you would say.
Thomas (15:02):
Yeah, I think so.
Particularly people in positionsof privilege, those so research
leaders and people in positionsof power in universities because
they're the ones who are able tooffer the most advantageous
opportunities.
de Waard (15:14):
Right, right.
Jayabalasingham (15:15):
Yeah, and Emma has a really good point.
In there in the gender reportthat's coming out next year and
we did a network analysis andone of the interesting findings
to me anyways was that womentend to network, and
co-authorship networks that aremore composed of women and men
tend to co-author more with men.
It seems really surprising.
(15:36):
But then on the flip side, Ilook at my k ids, m y girls,
they play with girls and youknow, my nieces or nephews, they
play with b oys.
S o we kind of start doing thisearly, so getting over that that
behavior requires some consciouseffort.
de Waard (15:57):
Hmm.
That's, that's an interestingthought.
It's really a fantasticcollaboration and, and a great
paper to read.
I'm not a statistician, but Ifound it fascinating how you
actually worked with all thedata and made, made things so
overwhelmingly clear.
So I was wondering to whatdegree this work has has
impacted your own writing orperhaps other academic efforts.
Jayabalasingham (16:18):
So I am working on a big report for Elsevier on,
you know, the researcher'sjourney through a gender lens it
looks at, participation,contribution networks,
perceptions of women and menwhen it comes to gender.
You know, the impact of genderon different aspects of a
researcher's career.
Having been involved in such arobust analysis with Emma helped
(16:42):
me sort of, suspend doubt on theother datapoints I was working
on because you know, it allbecomes part of this big
literature base.
Thomas (16:52):
Yeah.
I think the issue that I talkedabout before of connection and
diversifying our collaborationsis the one that's kind of
weighed heaviest on mepersonally.
I absolutely don't want tooveremphasize that as the only
thing that explains ourfindings.
I think, you know, gender biasis real and that's definitely
happening as well.
(17:13):
But as something that I can do,I think that's one of the most
important things is to try andconsciously expand my
professional networks.
And it's not something thatcomes naturally to me cause I'm
not, you know, I consider myselfan introvert when I go to
conferences.
I always think I should like,you know, network, make
connections and I just don'twant to do, it really doesn't
(17:34):
come naturally.
But you know, one thing thatreally struck me was I was at a
conference earlier this year,the women in statistics and data
science conference and Ipresented on this research and
there was a moment at the startof the conference where there
was an opening panel and therewere several women on the panel
speaking about their experiencesas data scientists and
(17:54):
statisticians.
And at the end a fellow studentgot up and pointed out the fact
that all of the women on thepanel happened to be white.
And you know, I should say likethe rest of the conference, we
had several wonderful plenaryspeakers who were women of
color.
So it didn't, you know, thatpattern didn't persist, but what
she said really stuck with mebecause I feel like as a student
(18:17):
at Harvard, you know, Idefinitely am influenced by some
amount of lack of diversity andthat it's easy to kind of fall
back on the connections that youhave and that, that entrenches,
that lack of diversity.
And so I think it's reallyincumbent on all of us and, and
I want to try and do it myselfto kind of expand the diversity
of our connections.
de Waard (18:38):
That's, that's a really interesting point.
So do you, this research reallyalso affected how you yourself
move now through your ownacademic networks.
Any thoughts on particularthings that perhaps editors or
journals might be able to do?
You already mentioned knowingmore data would be helpful.
So one question is, do, do folkshave adequate access to the
(19:00):
data?
Is there anything that either weourselves as a publisher or
other publishers or editorscould do to, to support this
diversification?
Jayabalasingham (19:09):
Yeah, I mean I think I go back to having
targets or or monitoring thedata.
You can't change something ifyou don't know or don't think
it's a problem.
So just knowing what the data isand what you're doing relative
to also knowing what could belike what is your available
pool?
(19:30):
How many women could are thereare women or men or whatever are
there that you could have chosenfor this position?
I think that that's the most,that's probably the lowest
hanging fruit action that can betaken
de Waard (19:44):
Just to be aware of all the, all the possible people
you could choose from
Jayabalasingham (19:49):
and to know what you're doing, what you've
been doing so far.
de Waard (19:53):
Right.
That sounds, that soundsextremely sensible.
Emma, any further thoughts?
Thomas (19:58):
I, I do think, you know, invited commentaries is a really
interesting area, partly becauseit's something that editors and
journals do have slightly morecontrol over.
They don't have total controlbecause when they invite
someone, they can't guaranteethat that person will accept.
And one of the things that Ireviewer about paper mentioned
was that they're actually in herexperience that were more women
(20:20):
who declined commentaryinvitations than men.
So I think, you know, supportingwomen to accept these
opportunities when they'reoffered to them and an
understanding, you know, whythey may not be able to except
those opportunities that that'ssomething that should be looked
into more carefully and perhapsgenerals can play a role in
that.
I do think, you know withinvited commentaries, if they
(20:44):
want to enforce a 50 50 gender,they in principle can do that.
I mean they can keep asking youknow, enough women until they
find someone who is able to doit.
de Waard (20:54):
Well, thank you so much.
Any last parting thoughts to ouraudience who have been
listening?
Jayabalasingham (21:00):
I think when it comes to representation, the
goal isn't to just have likeequal numbers of everyone,
right?
The goal is to improve scienceand to have science benefit from
diverse perspectives.
And so that needs not justnumbers of people to be, not
just for you to have equalnumber are not equal, but like
(21:20):
representation of they also needto be able to participate in
various aspects of science andtheir voices need to be heard.
And so editorials are just oneof those ways we think about
gender and science.
I think we had to think abouthow to facilitate participation
(21:40):
and what, what we get out ofthat also in terms of getting
those diverse perspectives.
de Waard (21:48):
Mmm.
Right.
So why does it even matter is agood question to ask.
Jayabalasingham (21:52):
Yeah.
de Waard (21:53):
Yeah.
Thank you.
And Emma, any last thoughts?
Thomas (21:56):
I think I would say that I, I believe strongly in using
the data as we've discussedusing data to its greatest
potential to try and addressthis issue.
I think there's just likeamazingly huge scope for
continued research in this area.
You know, working with Baminiand Tom Collins, he was also,
you know, a crucial part of thisresearch at Elsevier.
(22:19):
It was just like so awesomebecause I got access to this
incredible data set and peoplewith expertise on this
incredible data set and it maybe realized how much scope there
is for continued work in thisarea.
So anyone who has an interestand you know the energy like go
out and do it because I thinkit's really making a difference
(22:40):
on getting people's attention.
de Waard (22:41):
That's fantastic.
And Bamini, you were mentioningyou're working on the next
gender report.
Maybe a few closing words onwhat the timing of that is and
when people can look for it.
Jayabalasingham (22:50):
Yeah, so the launch for that report will be
in mid March.
We're covering a variety oftopics and it builds on the
previous report that wasreleased in 2017 we're looking
at participation of women andmen, their contribution to
research networks that theyform, looking at cohorts, using
(23:12):
cohorts to look at the longevityof their publishing careers and
their mobility.
And then we've also donequalitative analysis.
I understand perceptions relatedto gender and diversity issues
and how they vary acrossdifferent researchers.
de Waard (23:30):
Great.
So there's a lot to to discoverand discuss yet on gender and
the participation of women inboth in in invited commentaries,
but also larger in the academiaand the way that research is is
in the future.
Well, I want to thank you bothso much both for your work
(23:50):
writing this paper and forparticipating in this podcast.
Emma, best of luck on your PhD.
And Bamini, we're, we're verymuch looking forward to the
gender report.
We'll make sure to put links toeverything in in the podcast
page.
Thank you so much for joining.
Jayabalasingham (24:05):
Thanks for having us.
Thomas (24:07):
Thank you.
It was great to have thisconversation.
Music (24:12):
[ music]
Mancini (24:13):
The paper that Emma, Bamini and their coauthors
published makes it clear thatthe under-representation of
female researchers in invitedcommentaries cannot as many
supposed be blamed on a shortageof experienced candidates.
Instead, there are other factorsat play which they suggest range
from gender biases and busyschedules to an over-reliance on
(24:34):
familiar networks.
Their study also makes it clearthat this isn't simply a
pipeline issue that will resolveitself as a new generation of
women take on senior roles.
It requires intervention fromactively looking for women to
invite to supporting femalecolleagues when they receive
that invitation.
In fact, if we don't act now, wemay perpetuate the problem.
(24:56):
Invited commentaries contributeto the visibility that
researchers so desperately needto attract funding,
collaborators and progress intheir careers.
As both Emma and Bamini and youhave highlighted, there are
steps that all of us working inresearch can take to improve the
situation and here data willprove key that will help us
identify potential femalecandidates and allow us to
(25:17):
monitor our progress towardsimproved diversity.
It will also drive further andmuch needed research in this
area.
You will find a link to thearticle in our show notes along
with information on the Elseviergender report titled"The
researcher journey through agender lens" due to be published
in March of 2020 which furtherexplores the role genders play
(25:37):
in a researcher's' career.
Finally, we'd like to expressour gratitude to Emma Thomas and
Bamini Jayabalasingham forjoining us here on Research 2030
and our thanks to Anita de Waardfor hosting this episode.
I'm Giacomo Mancini and thankyou for listening.
Research 2030 is an officialElsevier podcast.
Subscribe now via the usualpodcast channels so you don't
(26:00):
miss a single episode.
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