Gender-Heterogeneous Working Groups Produce Higher Quality Science

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 8; no. 10; p. e79147
• Main Authors: Campbell, Lesley G., Mehtani, Siya, Dozier, Mary E., Rinehart, Janice
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 30.10.2013; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Author productivity; Authoring; Authorship; Bioaccumulation; Citations; Collaboration; Cooperative Behavior; Documents; Ecological monitoring; Ecologists; Ecology; Editors; Empirical analysis; Engineering; Evolutionary biology; Female; Gender differences; Hirsch index; Historical account; Human subjects; Humans; Information science; Male; Multiculturalism & pluralism; People with disabilities; Problem Solving; Reviews; Science; Scientometrics; Sex Factors; Sexism; Society; Studies; Working groups; United States > US
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0079147

Here we present the first empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that a gender-heterogeneous problem-solving team generally produced journal articles perceived to be higher quality by peers than a team comprised of highly-performing individuals of the same gender. Although women were historically underrepresented as principal investigators of working groups, their frequency as PIs at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis is now comparable to the national frequencies in biology and they are now equally qualified, in terms of their impact on the accumulation of ecological knowledge (as measured by the h-index). While women continue to be underrepresented as working group participants, peer-reviewed publications with gender-heterogeneous authorship teams received 34% more citations than publications produced by gender-uniform authorship teams. This suggests that peers citing these publications perceive publications that also happen to have gender-heterogeneous authorship teams as higher quality than publications with gender uniform authorship teams. Promoting diversity not only promotes representation and fairness but may lead to higher quality science.