Credit: Helena Lee
The idea of solving scientific questions that have never been answered before has always excited me — especially if that knowledge might go on to help someone medically. Despite this, I have come very close to giving up on a career as a clinician scientist. Continue reading
The proposal from the advisory body in Washington DC calls for more career counselling at the graduate and postdoctoral levels, better data on career outcomes at those levels, three-year caps on postdocs under principal investigators and new non-tenure track academic research positions, among other changes. To implement all the proposals would require a US$2 billion increase to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s budget, as well as subsequent budget raises to prevent future funding bottlenecks.
Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle gathered names of first and last authors from papers published from 2005-2017 in 15 major science and neuroscience journals, including Nature, Science, PNAS, Nature Neuroscience and Neuropsychology Review. Nearly 10% of the names were excluded because they were relatively gender neutral, but the rest told a clear story: In these journals, authorship is a male-dominated enterprise.
For example, women accounted for roughly 25% of all first authors in Nature and Science and just over 35% of first authors in PNAS. Female first authors outnumbered men in only one journal, Neuropsychology Review, but just barely (53% vs 47%). Women made up an even smaller proportion of senior (or last) author spots, ranging from about 15% in Nature and Science to just under 40% in Neuropsychology Review.
The study found an inverse relationship between the prevalence of female authors and the impact factor of the journal—the higher the impact, the lower the chances that a woman was involved. Because publication in high-impact journals is so crucial for a scientific career, any gender gap could have serious consequences, says Ione Fine, a neuroscientist and co-author of the study. “If you aren’t published in high-impact journals, you don’t get awards or jobs,” she says. “It becomes a cascade of events.”
The scarcity of women in journals doesn’t simply reflect a lack of women doing high-quality science, Fine says. The study notes that roughly 30% of prestigious R01 grants from the US National Institutes of Health go to women. But in almost all of the journals studied, the percentage of women in senior author spots falls below that mark, a sign that the gender disparity in authorship exceeds disparities in other measures of academic excellence and productivity. “That’s the smoking gun that we have a real problem here,” she says.
Subtle biases by reviewers may make it harder for women to get published, Fine says. But she notes that women themselves may be contributing to the gender gap through a reluctance to submit to top-tier journals. “My feeling is that women are self-censoring because it’s just a more brutal process for them,” she says. “I know my male colleagues submit papers that I wouldn’t submit, and they seem to do just fine.”
Fine and colleagues call for all journals to keep statistics on papers submitted by women and minorities. They also suggest that journals could greatly reduce the possibility of bias by adopting mandatory double-blind reviews, a system in which the reviewer doesn’t know the identity—or the gender—of the study’s authors. Nature and other journals provide double-blind reviews on request, but Fine says that practice won’t protect women from bias. If an author requests double-blind review, she says, the reviewer is likely to assume that the request came from a female researcher, thus defeating the purpose.
In response, Nature Research, the parent organisation of Nature, issued a statement that read, in part: “Nature Research is committed to gender equality and our journals strive to support women in science.” The company says that it does not ask submitters to indicate gender, so it doesn’t systematically track gender statistics. It also says that it will “continue to assess the merits” of mandatory and voluntary double-blind reviews.
A 2017 Nature editorial noted that the journal has made slow progress in other areas of gender equality. For example, women accounted for just over 20% of reviewers in 2015, a small improvement over previous years. In 2013, 13% of reviewers were women. But Fine says that hiring more female reviewers won’t necessarily close the publication gap. “Women can be biased too,” she says.
Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.
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Like many other European researchers, I moved to the US for my postdoc. While some stay in the US, and others return to Europe after their postdocs, I’m almost certain that anyone who has followed this path will have encountered a few shocks along the way. Choosing the right fit for your postdoctoral training is just as important as choosing the right lab for your PhD. Based on my experiences, here is a list of the things that I think are worth checking in advance to avoid thinking “I wish I had known” too often.
Rebecca and her daughter at the annual conference for the Animal Behavior Society at the University of Colorado in 2013
Calisi, a behavioural neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, and a group of 45 other scientist-parents, have turned their frustrations into a call for action. In a paper published online Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers detail the shortcomings of past conferences and offer a blueprint for making conferences more welcoming and accessible to parents of young children.
By not providing accommodations for children, Calisi says, conferences can unintentionally create barriers that exclude large swaths of scientists—especially early-career scientist-mothers who may not be able to afford childcare. “One part of promoting diversity is supporting women with children,” Calisi says. “If institutions say they want to support diversity, they should put their money where there mouth is.”
In the paper, Calisi and co-authors suggest that conferences could fund on-site childcare services, lactation rooms and other amenities by asking for voluntary donations during registration. Exhibitors who make a donation could receive a sign or emblem that show their support. “I guarantee you they would get more foot traffic,” Calisi tells Nature. The paper also calls for all conferences to clearly state that parents are allowed to bring babies to talks and poster sessions. For now, she says, rules about children seem to change from conference to conference and even from hour to hour. She notes that researchers with babies were recently turned away from a poster session at a large conference even though the official policy permitted children in the exhibit area.
A practical, comfortable space for breastfeeding or pumping breast milk is an especially important accommodation, Calisi says. “A lactation room tells you a lot about how much a [scientific] society values women,” she says. In November, she turned to Twitter to complain about the facilities at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) annual meeting, held last year in Washington DC. Within hours of that tweet, the society provided more comfortable lounge chairs for mothers. “It’s not that the society was anti-women,” she says. “They just didn’t know.”
SfN, for its part, aims to become more inclusive. “The society is actively exploring ways to continue to enhance the spaces for nursing mothers in San Diego [California] this year and at SfN’s future meetings,” says society spokesperson Kara Flynn in a statement to Nature. She adds that the society is committed to “fostering a welcome and diverse community in which all scientists are able to contribute fully.”
Some conferences are already parent-friendly, Calisi says. She recently attended the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement in Science in Austin, Texas, where the lactation room was comfortable and easily accessible. “I gave them two thumbs up,” she says.
Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.
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