Gender homophily in citations

Abstract

Citations are one of the key indicators of scientific influence. However, citations are not entirely neutral and are affected by several social factors. This research provides a comprehensive gendered analysis of citation patterns, considering author contribution, research field, and subject similarity. For this purpose, citation data of 7,011,369 articles published in 2008-2016 and indexed in the Web of Science are analyzed. The findings indicate that gender-based homophily in citations exists in all disciplines and that self-citations impose a considerable contribution to the allure of gender-based homophily in citations. This study suggests that men’s higher propensity to cite the work of their male-peers could render women’s scientific contributions invisible and under-recognized. The results of this study could inform science policy to explore mechanisms to obviate proliferation of the use of citation-based metrics for evaluative purposes and the consequent indirect biases they introduce into the reward system of science.