Does a gender-neutral name associate with the research impact of a scientist?

Ning Zhang, Guangye He, Dongbo Shi, Zhenyue Zhao and Jiang Li

Journal of Informetrics, 2022, vol. 16, issue 1

Abstract: Women have long suffered in both academia and industry from lower status, underrepresentation, unequal treatment, and other challenges based on gender. This paper explores whether a gender-neutral name is associated with the research impact of a scientist by examining three years of citations. The data for this study are derived from publications indexed in ISI's Web of Science (WoS) database from 2009 to 2015. By assigning a name neutralization index score to each author, we investigate the relationship between the neutralization index and citations and find the following results: (1) generally, the more neutral the name, the more citations the publications received; (2) the neutral effect was more pronounced for authors with feminine names than for authors with masculine names.

Keywords: Gender differences; Neutralization of names; Scientific impact; Regression analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:infome:v:16:y:2022:i:1:s1751157722000037

DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2022.101251

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