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Main Authors: Danus, Lluis, Davis, Robert H., Guimera, Roger, Sales-Pardo, Marta
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.19607
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author Danus, Lluis
Davis, Robert H.
Guimera, Roger
Sales-Pardo, Marta
author_facet Danus, Lluis
Davis, Robert H.
Guimera, Roger
Sales-Pardo, Marta
contents We study the influence that research environments have in shaping careers of early-career faculty in terms of their research portfolio. We find that departments exert an attractive force over early-career newcomer faculty, who after their incorporation increase their within-department collaborations, and work on topics closer to those of incumbent faculty. However, these collaborations are not gender blind: Newcomers collaborate less than expected with female senior incumbents. The analysis of departments grouped by fraction of female incumbents reveals that female newcomers in departments with above the median fractions of female incumbents tend to select research topics farther from their department than female newcomers in the remaining departments -- a difference we do not observe for male newcomers. Our results suggest a relationship between the collaboration deficit with female incumbents and the selection of research topics of female early-faculty, thus highlighting the importance of studying research environments to fully understand gender differences in academia.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_19607
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Gender and the influence of research environment in topic selection of early-career faculty in STEM
Danus, Lluis
Davis, Robert H.
Guimera, Roger
Sales-Pardo, Marta
Physics and Society
We study the influence that research environments have in shaping careers of early-career faculty in terms of their research portfolio. We find that departments exert an attractive force over early-career newcomer faculty, who after their incorporation increase their within-department collaborations, and work on topics closer to those of incumbent faculty. However, these collaborations are not gender blind: Newcomers collaborate less than expected with female senior incumbents. The analysis of departments grouped by fraction of female incumbents reveals that female newcomers in departments with above the median fractions of female incumbents tend to select research topics farther from their department than female newcomers in the remaining departments -- a difference we do not observe for male newcomers. Our results suggest a relationship between the collaboration deficit with female incumbents and the selection of research topics of female early-faculty, thus highlighting the importance of studying research environments to fully understand gender differences in academia.
title Gender and the influence of research environment in topic selection of early-career faculty in STEM
topic Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.19607