New paper in Scientometrics

I’m thrilled to share our latest study, published open access in Scientometrics. The paper is by Jochem Tolsma, myself, and Anne Maaike Mulders.

🧐 We asked whether women in Dutch science show a stronger productivity decline than men during COVID-19

🔭 We analyzed publication data from more than 8,000 scientists across all disciplines at all Dutch universities, covering the period from 1990 to 2022.

📖 What did we find? - During COVID-19, scientists published about 33% fewer papers - Dutch science was hit hard: “lost” around 20,000 publications - Scientists with childcare responsibilities struggled to maintain productivity - Researchers with a migration background were also hit harder - Barriers to productivity remain persistent for women scientists - Yet, the productivity gender gap did not widen during COVID

This is a key paper in the growing literature on the effects of COVID-19 on academia. It is done purely with webscraped data, and it is a showcase how you can do fine-grained analyses if you put in the work.

Here’s the paper.

Here’s the replication website.