Like many scientific disciplines, neuroscience has increasingly attempted to confront pervasive gender imbalances within the field. While much of the conversation has centered around publishing and conference participation, recent research in other fields has called attention to the prevalence of gender bias in citation practices. Because of the downstream effects that citations can have on visibility and career advancement, understanding and eliminating gender bias in citation practices is vital for addressing inequity in a scientific community. In this study, we sought to determine whether there is evidence of gender bias in the citation practices of neuroscientists. Using data from five top neuroscience journals, we find that reference lists tend to include more papers with men as first and last author than would be expected if gender were not a factor in referencing. Importantly, we show that this overcitation of men and undercitation of women is driven largely by the citation practices of men, and is increasing over time as the field becomes more diverse. We develop a co-authorship network to assess homophily in researchers' social networks, and we find that men tend to overcite men even when their social networks are representative. We discuss possible mechanisms and consider how individual researchers might address these findings in their own practices.

中文翻译：

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神经科学参考文献中性别失衡的程度和驱动因素

像许多科学学科一样，神经科学越来越多地试图解决该领域普遍存在的性别失衡问题。虽然大部分对话都集中在出版和会议参与上，但最近其他领域的研究已经引起人们对引用实践中普遍存在的性别偏见的关注。由于引用会对知名度和职业发展产生下游影响，因此理解和消除引用实践中的性别偏见对于解决科学界的不平等问题至关重要。在这项研究中，我们试图确定神经科学家的引用实践中是否存在性别偏见的证据。使用来自五个顶级神经科学期刊的数据，我们发现参考文献列表中以男性为第一和最后作者的论文往往比如果性别不是参考因素时预期的要多。重要的是，我们表明这种对男性的过度引用和对女性的引用不足主要是由男性的引用实践驱动的，并且随着该领域变得更加多样化而随着时间的推移而增加。我们开发了一个共同作者网络来评估研究人员社交网络中的同质性，我们发现即使他们的社交网络具有代表性，男性也倾向于过度引用男性。我们讨论可能的机制并考虑个别研究人员如何在他们自己的实践中解决这些发现。随着该领域变得更加多样化，并且随着时间的推移而增加。我们开发了一个共同作者网络来评估研究人员社交网络中的同质性，我们发现即使他们的社交网络具有代表性，男性也倾向于过度引用男性。我们讨论可能的机制并考虑个别研究人员如何在他们自己的实践中解决这些发现。随着该领域变得更加多样化，并且随着时间的推移而增加。我们开发了一个共同作者网络来评估研究人员社交网络中的同质性，我们发现即使他们的社交网络具有代表性，男性也倾向于过度引用男性。我们讨论可能的机制并考虑个别研究人员如何在他们自己的实践中解决这些发现。