Gender and authorship patterns in urban land science

Abstract

What are patterns of gender and authorship in urban land science? Our bibliometric analysis shows that the proportion of women shrinks among highly productive, impactful, and senior authors, akin to a pyramid shape. First, women are only one in ten researchers with an h-index above the 95th percentile. Second, women are first authors on 20% of all influential papers cited more than one hundred times. Third, women publish less frequently (1.6 papers/year) than men (2.2). Fourth, women have shorter career lengths (9.4 years) than men (11.8). Since the 2000s, citation rates for women and men have converged. For the generation starting careers since 2016, the proportion of women with an h-index above the 90th percentile increased to 25%. During the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a 51% increase in productivity for women. Despite these changes, gender disparities in urban land science are most pronounced among the most productive and impactful authors.