Men are their own favorite experts, study finds

A new working paper has found that male academics tend to cite their own past work when developing new research more often than their female colleagues.

In academia, citation is when a study author references a past study when trying to break new ground. For instance, it isn’t enough to just state that “cycles of freezing and thawing carbon dioxide can form geologic feature on Mars.” Papers must back up their claims by referencing valid studies.

An analysis of 1.5 million papers in the digital academic library JSTOR by authors of the new paper revealed men practice self-citation 56 percent more often than women. Researchers also found men’s self-citation rate rose 70 percent more than women’s in the past 20 years. Self-citations represented about 10 percent of all citations in the study.

The study team found this disparity to be true across every major academic field they looked at, including biology, law, and philosophy. The study authors — three women and two men — also noted that the pattern held true among them.

“The men authors of this paper cite themselves at nearly three times the average rate of the women authors,” the study said.

Self-citation in Science

Some self-citation is relatively benign. When a researcher is focused on a relatively obscure corner of their field, there won’t be a lot of work by others to cite when developing a new study. The problem with self-citation is the fact that universities often use citation counts to make hiring, tenure and pay decisions. This means an unscrupulous academic could game the system to their professional advantage.

Speaking with Nature News, lead author Molly King, a sociologist at Stanford University, noted that most self-citations are “appropriate,” but the practice changes scholars’ professional status and prestige.

“Every citation a paper receives will attract additional future attention from other scholars,” King said.

The study does have a few limitations.

Gender determinations were made based on sex listed in Social Security Administration records and the team excluded study author with gender-neutral names. The team also excluded authors who were listed with only a first initial, which may have biased the study against women. The study team suggested that some women may only use their first initial to obscure their gender.

“Only 56.4 percent of all the authors in their database were able to be assigned a gender,” said Adrian Letchford, a data scientist at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. “That’s a very big portion left out, especially considering that women may be actively hiding their gender.”

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