MEASURES OF SEX-DIFFERENCES IN SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTIVITY

Satisfactory and robust explanations of sex differences in scientific productivity remain elusive. This article provides a multidimensional, longitudinal description of the productivity of male and female biochemists. Several findings have implications for explaining differences in productivity. Sex differences in the numbers of publications and citations increase during the first decade of the career but are reversed later in the career. The lower productivity of females results from their overrepresentation among nonpublishers and their underrepresentation among the extremely productive. Among biochemists who publish, differences cannot be explained by patterns of collaboration, which are nearly identical for males and females, with one exception: females are much more likely to collaborate with a spouse. The smaller number of citations received by females results from their fewer publications, not from the quality of their publications. Papers by females on average receive more citations than those by males. These and other findings suggest future directions for research to understand sex differences in scientific productivity.