Who publishes, who gets cited? New study at the department [16.12.25]
The article “Authors' gender and productivity as predictors of reciprocal dynamics in publications and citations in communication” by Astrid Jansen, Sabine Trepte, and Michael Scharkow has been published in the journal Annals of the International Communication Association.
Source: Pexels
The study was conducted as part of the “Gender Diversity” research project led by Prof. Sabine Trepte (University of Hohenheim, Media Psychology Department) and Prof. Michael Scharkow (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz). Astrid Jansen, research assistant at the Chair of Media and Usage Research, is part of the research team.
The study examines how individual factors such as gender and productivity, as well as systemic factors such as journal prestige, influence the relationship between publication and citation frequency. The analysis is based on more than 57,000 articles and over 500,000 citations from 85 communication science journals between 2000 and 2022.
The results show that a higher number of publications is associated with a higher citation rate – but men and women do not benefit equally from this: although women published more articles during the period under review, they are cited less frequently than men. Journal prestige plays no role in this. The authors therefore call for structural changes to reduce existing inequalities in academic recognition.
Further publication from the same research context
The current publication follows on from a recently published study from the same research context, which was produced in cooperation with several German universities and scientists. Sabine Trepte, Michael Scharkow, and Astrid Jansen were also involved in this publication.
The article “Gender diversity in the field of communication in DACH countries – a scientometric analysis of the scientific job market, publications, citations, and grants” was published in the journal Publizistik (Link to article).
This study examines the gender distribution in the academic field of communication in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and analyzes differences in the scientific job market, publications, citations, and research funding. The results show progress in the representation of women, but also continuing imbalances – particularly in the visibility of scientific work and in the allocation of third-party funding.
