{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pbio.3002385","title":"Gender imbalances among top-cited scientists across scientific disciplines over time through the analysis of nearly 5.8 million authors","abstract":"We evaluated how the gender composition of top-cited authors within different subfields of research has evolved over time. We considered 9,071,122 authors with at least 5 full papers in Scopus as of September 1, 2022. Using a previously validated composite citation indicator, we identified the 2% top-cited authors for each of 174 science subfields (Science-Metrix classification) in 4 separate publication age cohorts (first publication pre-1992, 1992 to 2001, 2002 to 2011, and post-2011). Using NamSor, we assigned 3,784,507 authors as men and 2,011,616 as women (for 36.1% gender assignment uncertain). Men outnumbered women 1.88-fold among all authors, decreasing from 3.93-fold to 1.36-fold over time. Men outnumbered women 3.21-fold among top-cited authors, decreasing from 6.41-fold to 2.28-fold over time. In the youngest (post-2011) cohort, 32/174 (18%) subfields had > = 50% women, 97/174 (56%) subfields had > = 30% women, and 3 subfields had = <10% women among the top-cited authors. Gender imbalances in author numbers decreased sharply over time in both high-income countries (including the United States of America) and other countries, but the latter had little improvement in gender imbalances for top-cited authors. In random samples of 100 women and 100 men from the youngest (post-2011) cohort, in-depth assessment showed that most were currently (April 2023) working in academic environments. 32 women and 44 men had some faculty appointment, but only 2 women and 2 men were full professors. Our analysis shows large heterogeneity across scientific disciplines in the amelioration of gender imbalances with more prominent imbalances persisting among top-cited authors and slow promotion pathways even for the most-cited young scientists.","journal":"PLOS Biology","year":2023,"id":5443,"datarank":0.8731223321631912,"base_score":3.2188758248682006,"endowment":3.2188758248682006,"self_citation_contribution":0.48283137373023016,"citation_network_contribution":0.3902909584329611,"self_endowment_contribution":0.48283137373023016,"citer_contribution":0.3902909584329611,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":24,"citer_count":22,"citers_with_citation_signal":15,"citers_with_endowment":15,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.0866,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-11-21","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":5151,"name":"Kevin W. Boyack","orcid":"0000-0001-7814-8951","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":11830,"name":"Thomas A. Collins","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":11483,"name":"Jeroen Baas","orcid":"0000-0001-8005-4153","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":148,"name":"John P. A. Ioannidis","orcid":"0000-0003-3118-6859","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":32,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}