New publication for Marc Lerchenmüller and Leo Schmallenbach “Gender disparities in Altmetric attention scores for cardiovascular research”

Our colleagues Marc Lerchenmüller and Leo Schmallenbach alongside Maximilian Bley and Carolin Lerchenmüller (Heidelberg University) published a new article in the journal Nature Communications Biology. The study unveils gender disparities in the recognition of scientific contributions.

The author team analyzed over 6,000 articles published in the top five cardiology and cardiovascular journals between 2015 and 2021. The authors used the Altmetric Attention Score (ASS) to measure the attention these articles received (e.g., on social media or in the news).

Articles by women first and last authors experienced a concerning 11.2% and 8.7% lower Altmetric Attention Scores, respectively. The reduced attention to research by women primarily stemmed from social media and was correlated with fewer citations. Worryingly, this correlation between attention and citations also appears to be gendered: women authors received up to 20% fewer citations compared to men for articles with similar levels of attention.

The full paper is available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05058-9