Changing the Academic Gender Narrative through Open Access

• Published in: Publications (Basel) Vol. 10; no. 3; p. 22
• Main Authors: Wilson, Katie, Huang, Chun-Kai (Karl), Montgomery, Lucy, Neylon, Cameron, Handcock, Rebecca N., Ozaygen, Alkim, Roelofs, Aniek
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01-07-2022
• Subjects: Academic discourse; Analysis; Archives & records; Author productivity; Bias; Bibliometrics; Careers; Collaboration; Demographic aspects; Demography; Forecasts and trends; Funding; gender bias; Gender differences; gender disparities; Gender equality; Gender equity; Higher education; Humanities; Institutional repositories; Library catalogs; Masking; Narratives; open access; Open access journals; Open access publishing; open research; open science; publishing; Scholarly publishing; Scientometrics; Sex discrimination; Social sciences; Women; New Zealand; Australia; United Kingdom > UK
• ISSN: 2304-6775; 2304-6775
• DOI: 10.3390/publications10030022

In this article, we ask whether dominant narratives of gender and performance within academic institutions are masking stories that may be both more complex and potentially more hopeful than those which are often told using publication-related data. Influenced by world university rankings, institutions emphasise so-called ‘excellent’ research practices: publish in ‘high impact’, elite subscription journals indexed by the commercial bibliographic databases that inform the various ranking systems. In particular, we ask whether data relating to institutional demographics and open access publications could support a different story about the roles that women are playing as pioneers and practitioners of open scholarship. We review gender bias in scholarly publications and discuss examples of open access research publications that highlight a positive advantage for women. Using analysis of workforce demographics and open research data from our Open Knowledge Initiative project, we explore relationships and correlations between academic gender and open access research output from universities in Australia and the United Kingdom. This opens a conversation about different possibilities and models for exploring research output by gender and changing the dominant narrative of deficit in academic publishing.