Gender shapes the relationship between productivity and journal prestige in science

TL;DR

This study investigates how gender influences the relationship between research productivity and journal prestige among Brazilian scientists, revealing gender-specific career trajectories and publication patterns.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of gender differences in academic careers, linking productivity and journal prestige through Bayesian modeling across disciplines.

Findings

Male researchers are more likely to follow productivity-focused trajectories.

Female researchers tend to prioritize journal prestige over publication quantity.

Male researchers publish more overall but achieve comparable or higher journal prestige in later stages.

Abstract

Gender disparities in academia manifest and persist in various aspects of the scientific enterprise, yet their influence on the interplay between research productivity and journal prestige remains underexplored. Here we analyze the academic trajectories of over 6,000 elite Brazilian researchers by jointly tracking their annual productivity and the average prestige of the journals in which they publish. By projecting individual career years onto a standardized productivity-prestige plane and applying Bayesian hierarchical modeling, we find that male researchers are more likely to follow productivity-oriented trajectories and are markedly overrepresented in the hyperprolific region of this plane. Female peers, in contrast, more often occupy regions that prioritize journal prestige over publication quantity. Although male researchers publish more throughout their careers, their female counterparts achieve comparable or higher average journal prestige, particularly in later career stages and among outlier individuals. Male researchers also exhibit greater temporal persistence in their productivity and impact levels and are especially averse to simultaneously changing both metrics compared to their female peers. Among non-outliers, productivity and career age have a negative overall impact on the average journal prestige of researchers of both genders, with slightly stronger effects observed among female researchers; however, these patterns vary across disciplines, highlighting the complexity and heterogeneity of academic careers.