Gender diversity in research teams and citation impact in Economics and Management

TL;DR

This study examines gender differences in research collaboration and finds that mixed-gender teams tend to receive more citations, with gender diversity positively influencing academic impact in Economics and Management disciplines.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how gender diversity in research teams affects citation impact and characterizes collaboration patterns between men and women in Economics and Management.

Findings

Mixed-gender publications receive more citations.

Gender diversity has a positive effect on citation impact.

Small negative effect on citations when the corresponding author is a woman.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold:1)contribute to a better understanding of the place of women in Economics and Management disciplines by characterizing the difference in levels of scientific collaboration between men and women at the specialties level;2) Investigate the relationship between gender diversity and citation impact in Economics and Management. Our data, extracted from the Web of Science database, cover global production as indexed in 302 journals in Economics and 370 journals in Management, with respectively 153 667 and 163 567 articles published between 2008 and 2018. Results show that collaborative practices between men and women are quite different in Economics and Management. We also find that there is a positive and significant effect of gender diversity on the academic impact of publications. Mixed-gender publications (co-authored by men and women) receive more citations than non-mixed papers (written by same-gender author teams) or single-author publications. The effect is slightly stronger in Management. The regression analysis also indicates that there is, for both disciplines, a small negative effect on citations received if the corresponding author is a woman.