A new paper authored by Marek Kwiek and Lukasz Szymula – based on structured Big Data – was accepted in Quantitative Science Studies, a premiere journal in the area (Scopus 99th journal percentile).
Title: “Young Male and Female Scientists: A Quantitative Exploratory Study of the Changing Demographics of the Global Scientific Workforce”.
Abstract: In this study, the global scientific workforce is explored through large-scale, generational, cross-sectional, and longitudinal approaches. We examine 4.3 million nonoccasional scientists from 38 OECD countries publishing in 1990-2021. Our interest is in the changing distribution of young male and female scientists over time across 16 STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) disciplines. We unpack the details of the changing scientific workforce using age groups. Some disciplines are already numerically dominated by women, and the change is fast in some and slow in other disciplines. In one-third of disciplines, there are already more youngest female than male scientists. Across all disciplines combined, the majority of women are young women. And more than half of women scientists (55.02%) are located in medicine. The usefulness of global bibliometric data sources in analyzing the scientific workforce along gender, age, discipline, and time is tested. Traditional aggregated data about scientists in general hide a nuanced picture of the changing gender dynamics within and across disciplines and age groups. The limitations of bibliometric datasets are explored, and global studies are compared with national-level studies. The methodological choices and their implications are shown, and new opportunities for how to study scientists globally are discussed.
The paper is available here and should be available as online-first soon!
Bio
Professor Marek Kwiek is Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies and UNESCO Chair in Institutional Research and Higher Education Policy, University of Poznan, Poland (https://ias.amu.edu.pl/director/). His research area is quantitative studies of science, with interests in globalization, academic profession, and international research collaboration. He has published 230 papers and his recent monograph is Changing European Academics: A Comparative Study of Social Stratification, Work Patterns and Research Productivity (Routledge, 2019). His most recent invited seminars include Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Beijing and Hong Kong. He spent three years at North American universities, including the University of Virginia, UC Berkeley, National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC, and McGill University. He was also a Fulbright New Century Scholar in higher education (2007-2008) and a Professorial Visiting Fellow at the UCL Institute of Education, London (2012-2013). Currently, he is a Visiting Researcher at the German Center for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), Berlin. A Principal Investigator or country Team Leader in 25 international higher education research projects. An editorial board member of several academic journals, including Higher Education Quarterly, British Educational Research Journal, and European Educational Research Journal. A Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA) in Salzburg and Academia Europaeain London. Contact: marek.kwiek@amu.edu.pl. Twitter: @Marek_Kwiek.