Gender and the Production of Research Impact

2026-08-26

AI Summary

研究通过结合英国研究卓越框架和大规模文献计量数据，分析了性别对科研成果在政策、健康等非学术领域影响的贡献差异。

Abstract

Evaluating the impact of scientific research beyond academia --- on policy, health, the economy, and cultural life --- has become a cornerstone of science policy and research-funding allocation worldwide. Yet which researchers produce the research underpinning this impact, and how this production is shaped by gender, remains poorly understood. We combine structured and unstructured records from the United Kingdom's latest Research Excellence Framework, the largest national research assessment currently in operation, with large-scale bibliometric data to quantify gender differences among the researchers underpinning documented impact. Women account for 38.16% of these contributors: underrepresented overall, but with a consistently higher share than in research-output authorships (33.63%), both overall and across all four REF panels. Impact production is also strongly gendered across domains: women are better represented in case studies concerning education, health, cultural, and civil-society impact, whereas those concerning commercialisation pathways such as patenting and manufacturing remain dominated by men. These findings reveal critical inequalities across the pathways that connect research to impact beyond academia, offering crucial evidence for policymakers and academic institutions aiming to build more equitable and representative systems for evaluating scientific contributions.

Problem

• gender
• research impact
• science policy

Innovation

• gender differences
• research impact
• bibliometric data
• Research Excellence Framework (REF)