Our next guest of speaker series of Institute for Political Science is Manuel Goyanes (Carlos III University - Universidad de Salamanca) with the presentation entitled:

Research Patterns in Communication (2009-2019): Testing Female Representation and Publication Efficiency, within Most Cited Scholars and across the Field

Inequalities in academia are considerable, persistent, and subjected to broad scholarly scrutiny. Drawing upon the concepts of Matilda and Matthew-effects, this study compares the evolution of female scholars as leading authors, the growth of authors per paper, and the productive strategies in the last decade of the most cited scholars versus the representative sample in the Communication field. Results indicate that female leading authors remain to endure a systematic disadvantage. In the span of a decade, there are significantly more leading female authors in the field, but their proportion among the most cited scholars has not yet crystalized, introducing what we term as latent Matilda-effect. Likewise, the number of authors per paper has significantly increased in the field, but not among the most cited scholars, who, in turn, publish significantly more papers than the field average, within both 2009 and 2019. And not only that, the productivity gap between the most cited scholars and the field has substantially increased between the span of this decade, perpetuating a rich get richer effect. Theoretical implications of these findings and suggestions for future studies are finally discussed.