Is the scientific impact of the LIS themes gender‑biased? A bibliometric analysis of the evolution, scientific impact, and relative contribution by gender from 2007 to 2022
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemEditorial
Springer Nature
Materia
Gender differences Bibliometrics Science mapping
Fecha
2024-04-23Referencia bibliográfica
Choji, T.T., Cobo, M.J. & Moral-Munoz, J.A. Is the scientific impact of the LIS themes gender-biased? A bibliometric analysis of the evolution, scientific impact, and relative contribution by gender from 2007 to 2022. Scientometrics (2024). [https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05005-3]
Patrocinador
Funding for open access publishing: Universidad de Cádiz/CBUA; Spanish State Research Agency through the projects PID2019-105381GA-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (iScience) and C-ING-165-UGR23; Regional Ministry of University, Research and Innovation and by the European Union under the Andalusia ERDF Programme 2021–2027Resumen
Gender equity remains a challenge both globally and within academia, despite recent
efforts to change it. Moreover, beyond the authors’ productivity, studies have reported
that women often achieve lower scientific impact than their peers. To shed light on this
complex relationship between the scientific impact and the themes addressed, this study
conducts a comprehensive analysis of Library and Information Science field from 2007
to 2022 in four consecutive slides, identifying the principal themes covered in the field,
analyzing the relative gender contribution rate, employing strategic diagrams, and assessing
impact metrics, such as mean normalized citation score, 1% of most cited papers,
and H-Classic. We employed science mapping analysis to explore a core of 45,650 documents
from the Web of Science, with gender identification in 94.25% of cases. Our findings
revealed a slight increase in the percentage of women authors within the field across
the time, and a decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating consistency in the
themes addressed over the years. Women were overrepresented in the classic themes of
LIS, human, and health-related fields, with these themes displaying lower performance
rates. In contrast, men authors were overrepresented in STEM-related fields and innovation
themes, associated with higher metric values. Our findings underlined the potential
association between research themes and scientific performance, and provide societal and
structural explanations for these observations. This study contributes valuable insights into
the relationship between research themes and the scientific impact achieved by researchers
in LIS, highlighting the importance of encouraging women’s participation in diverse
knowledge domains and challenging prevailing stereotypes within academic and professional
spheres.