Exploring the Gender Productivity Gap

Academic publishing is increasingly shaped by two opposing forces: the escalating pressure for productivity in a competitive, neoliberal environment, and the emergence of predatory publishing practices that exploit this demand. This manuscript investigates the persistent gender productivity gap within this landscape, linking it to broader systemic inequities and questionable research practices (QRPs) that undermine the integrity of scientific work.

Drawing on extensive data from the Zurich Survey of Academics (approx. N = 4,500) and integrated bibliometric sources, we analyze how gendered work ethics, risk-taking behaviors, and publication strategies contribute to differences in research output across disciplines. By exploring the intersection of gender, and the commodification of scholarly knowledge, we reveal how women’s cautious publishing strategies and adherence to ethical norms often position them at a disadvantage in a system increasingly geared toward rapid output and questionable shortcuts.

Preliminary findings reveal a gender gap in total publications, fractionalized peer-reviewed publications, and the H-index. Surprisingly, traditional hypotheses about writing null results and time allocation are unsupported by the data. However, positive correlations emerge between explicit attitudes toward QRP, risky publication strategies, and higher productivity measures. Our findings suggest that women are disproportionately excluded from the rewards of academic productivity, while men more readily engage in high-risk, high-reward publishing strategies. In an era marked by the platformisation of scientific research and the opaque operations of predatory journals, this research highlights the need for structural reforms to ensure transparency, equity, and sustainability in academic publishing.

This project calls for a critical reevaluation of research evaluation policies, questioning the role of academic publishing in perpetuating inequality and academic pollution, and advocating for more inclusive, ethical, and open-access approaches to the dissemination of knowledge.