Sociologists of science have been pondering that question since the late 1970s, when they documented the fact that women scientists publish about half as many articles as men do. And a recent study has uncovered a surprising new piece of the "productivity puzzle." Women biochemists publish less than men do, the study acknowledges, but the average paper written by a woman is cited more often than the average paper written by a man, according to J. Scott Long, a sociologist at Indiana University.
"What this data is saying is that women may not publish as much [as men], but the work they do publish is utilized by the scientific community more," says Long, author of the study, which was published in the journal Social Forces (71[1]:159-78, September 1992).
Long analyzed the publication and citation records of 550 men and 600 women biochemists who got their Ph.D.'s between 1950 and 1963. ...
