2022/08/29 by Yang Yang, Tanya Y. Tian, Teresa K. Woodruff +2 · 1 voice · 5 citations
Decision Sciences · Social Sciences · Medicine · #scientometrics and bibliometrics research #Conferences and Exhibitions Management #Health and Medical Research Impacts
paper · doi:10.1073/pnas.2200841119
openalex publication_date 2022/08/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Science's changing demographics raise new questions about research team diversity and research outcomes. We study mixed-gender research teams, examining 6.6 million papers published across the medical sciences since 2000 and establishing several core findings. First, the fraction of publications by mixed-gender teams has grown rapidly, yet mixed-gender teams continue to be underrepresented compared to the expectations of a null model. Second, despite their underrepresentation, the publications of mixed-gender teams are substantially more novel and impactful than the publications of same-gender teams of equivalent size. Third, the greater the gender balance on a team, the better the team scores on these performance measures. Fourth, these patterns generalize across medical subfields. Finally, the novelty and impact advantages seen with mixed-gender teams persist when considering numerous controls and potential related features, including fixed effects for the individual researchers, team structures, and network positioning, suggesting that a team's gender balance is an underrecognized yet powerful correlate of novel and impactful scientific discoveries.