Female scientists use less positive language about their work, study finds

Tendency of men to use words such as ‘excellent’ has effect on future citations of research

Male scientists are more likely than female ones to publish work that describes itself as “excellent”, “unique” or “novel”, experts have found – a swagger that appears to reap dividends in respect of how often others reference the research.

The study suggests research papers in which the first and last authors were both women – positions typically taken by the junior researcher who did most of the work and the head of the research group, respectively – were on average more than 12% less likely to use at least one positive term to describe the research than papers for which the first author, last author or both were men.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/34rwyIn