📋 Introduction

• Paper Title: Gender-diverse teams produce more novel and higher-impact scientific ideas
• Year of Publication: June 2024
• Journal: Processing of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States of America
• Authors: Yang Yang (University of Notre Dam), Tanya Y. Tian (New York University Shanghai), Teresa K. Woodruff (Michigan State University), Benjamin F. Jones (Kellog School of Management, Northwestern University), Brian Uzzi (Northwestern University)

Findings

They researchers found that papers published by teams with a mix of male and female researchers were more likely to contain novel ideas and make a bigger splash in the scientific community compared to those published by single-gender teams.

Mixed-gender teams were found to publish papers that are up to 7% more novel and 14.6% more likely to be highly cited "upper-tail" papers compared to papers published by same-gender teams. The performance advantages of gender diversity hold across scientific team sizes, 45 medical research subfields, and teams led by either women or men. The greater the gender balance on a team (approaching 50/50), the more the novelty and impact of the team's research increases.

Methodology

The researchers delved into a massive trove of data spanning 20 years and over 6 million research papers from more than 15,000 medical journals. Drawing from the Microsoft Academic Graph database, they compiled a comprehensive dataset that included bibliographic information, authorship details, and citation data for each publication.

To tackle the challenge of determining the gender of authors, the researchers turned to a sophisticated name-to-gender inference algorithm called Namsor. This tool allowed them to estimate gender based on first and last names, and the researchers took great care to validate the accuracy of these estimates against self-reported data and other reliable sources.

With the gender of authors in hand, the researchers divided teams into two categories: mixed-gender teams, which included both men and women, and same-gender teams, which were composed entirely of either men or women. They also calculated a continuous measure of gender diversity based on the proportion of women on each team.

To assess the performance of these teams, the researchers looked at two key metrics: novelty and impact. Novelty was gauged by examining the atypicality of journal pairs cited by a paper and the rareness of co-cited subject pairs, while impact was determined by citation metrics, with high-impact papers defined as those in the top 5% of citations for their publication year.

Reasons behind the insight

So what's behind these findings? The researchers point to a few potential factors. For one, mixed-gender teams were found to have a more diverse range of expertise and broader professional networks compared to single-gender teams. They also tended to have members at different stages of their careers, bringing a mix of fresh perspectives and seasoned experience to the table. Additionally, gender-diverse teams were more likely to have members from different countries and cultural backgrounds.

While these factors likely play a role, the researchers suggest there may be other mechanisms at work that are unique to the dynamic of mixed-gender teams. Previous studies have hinted that women may boost communication and collaboration on a team, and it's possible that men and women each bring distinct viewpoints that enrich the team's overall approach.