Men set their own Cites High: Gender and Self-Citation across Fields and Over Time

• In Event: 378 - Regular Session. Sociology of Science

Abstract

In almost all academic fields, men cite their own research papers at a higher rate than women do. Using a dataset of 1.6 million papers in the scholarly database JSTOR, we present results across dozens of academic subfields. Despite increased representation of women in academia, the gender gap in self-citation rates has widened over the last 50 years. Since we also find that nearly 10% of cited articles are self-citations by a paper's authors, this finding has important implications for scholarly visibility and potential consequences for academic careers.

Authors

• Molly M. King, Stanford University

• Shelley J. Correll, Stanford University

• Jennifer Jacquet, New York University

• Carl T Bergstrom, University of Washington

• Jevin D West, University of Washington