德国曼海姆大学Marc J Lerchenmueller研究组分析了科学家在展示他们研究的重要性方面的性别差异。该研究成果2019年12月16日发表在国际一流学术期刊《英国医学杂志》上。

在医学和生命科学院系中，女性的代表性依然不足。研究组探讨了在临床研究中自我展示的性别差异。

研究组对PubMed中2002-2017年间出版的大约620万篇总生命科学文章和101720篇临床研究文章的标题和摘要进行了分析，以确定作者在使用“新颖”或“优秀”等词汇来积极展示研究成果中的性别差异。

第一作者和最后作者均为女性的文章中有10.9%在标题和摘要中至少使用25个积极词汇中的1个，而第一作者和最后作者均为男性的文章中这一比率为12.2%，相对差异为12.3%。

在高影响力（影响因子>10）临床期刊中，积极展示的性别差异最大，其中女性的积极展示率降低了21.4%。在所有临床期刊中，积极展示可导致后续引用率增长9.4%，而在高影响力临床期刊中，积极展示可导致引用率增长13.0%。研究结果与PubMed收录期刊上发表的总生命科学文章一致，这表明积极词汇使用中的性别差异普遍存在。

总而言之，与第一作者和最后作者均为女性的文章相比，第一作者和最后作者均为男性的文章更倾向于在标题和摘要中积极展示研究结果，尤其是影响力最高的文章。积极展示研究结果还会增加后续引用。

附：英文原文

Title: Gender differences in how scientists present the importance of their research: observational study

Author: Marc J Lerchenmueller, Olav Sorenson, Anupam B Jena

Issue&Volume: 2019/12/16

Abstract:

Objectives Women remain underrepresented on faculties of medicine and the life sciences more broadly. Whether gender differences in self presentation of clinical research exist and may contribute to this gender gap has been challenging to explore empirically. The objective of this study was to analyze whether men and women differ in how positively they frame their research findings and to analyze whether the positive framing of research is associated with higher downstream citations.

Design Retrospective observational study.

Data sources Titles and abstracts from 101?720 clinical research articles and approximately 6.2 million general life science articles indexed in PubMed and published between 2002 and 2017.

Main outcome measures Analysis of article titles and abstracts to determine whether men and women differ in how positively they present their research through use of terms such as “novel” or “excellent.” For a set of 25 positive terms, we estimated the relative probability of positive framing as a function of the gender composition of the first and last authors, adjusting for scientific journal, year of publication, journal impact, and scientific field.

Results Articles in which both the first and last author were women used at least one of the 25 positive terms in 10.9% of titles or abstracts versus 12.2% for articles involving a male first or last author, corresponding to a 12.3% relative difference (95% CI 5.7% to 18.9%). Gender differences in positive presentation were greatest in high impact clinical journals (impact factor >10), in which women were 21.4% less likely to present research positively. Across all clinical journals, positive presentation was associated with 9.4% (6.6% to 12.2%) higher subsequent citations, and in high impact clinical journals 13.0% (9.5% to 16.5%) higher citations. Results were similar when broadened to general life science articles published in journals indexed by PubMed, suggesting that gender differences in positive word use generalize to broader samples.

Conclusions Clinical articles involving a male first or last author were more likely to present research findings positively in titles and abstracts compared with articles in which both the first and last author were women, particularly in the highest impact journals. Positive presentation of research findings was associated with higher downstream citations.

DOI: 10.1136/bmj.l6573

Source: https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6573