While critical ethnographic methods can reveal how different groups and individuals perceive academic writing and publishing, quantitative methods make it possible to identify patterns – including those that are not necessarily perceived at the individual level.
Statistics used to compile indicators of research productivity can be useful sources of data for the critical researcher, as long as the data is sufficiently unpacked with a sensitivity to the situatedness of academic writing and publishing. The kinds of writing and publication practices that are highly valued in one context may be viewed with scepticism in another, which means that creating a simple indicator that will be equally applicable across different fields is a difficult endeavour indeed. For example, simply counting publications is made difficult by differences in co-authorship practices: in fields like philosophy solo-authoring is the norm and writing in a team is unheard of, while the opposite is true in STEM fields. If all authors are given full credit for each publication they are part of, then STEM researchers will appear extremely prolific compared to philosophers.
This presentation draws from Nygaard and Bahgat (2018) and ongoing research by Nygaard, Aksnes, and Piro (forthcoming), which use quantitative methods to examine how the gap in research productivity between men and women changes depending on what is measured, how it is measured, and how the data is (dis-)aggregated.
In these studies, gender gaps in productivity are examined in terms of total output, the types of publications produced, publication channels, and (co-)authorship patterns. The results are disaggregated vertically (by academic position) and horizontally (by scientific field). Prestige is examined by using the Norwegian Publication Indicator (NPI) formula to assign value to publications based on their type, their authorship, and where they are published. Nygaard and Bahgat (2018) examines in depth a single Norwegian social science research institute over a seven-year period, while the ongoing project examines a complete dataset for all Norwegian researchers for a three-year period.
The situated nature of academic writing and publishing patterns means that there will be systematic differences in the publications that are produced (e.g., monographs are more likely to be written by scholars in the humanities than by scientists in STEM fields) and the ways in which they are produced (scholars in the humanities are less likely to write in teams than scientists in STEM fields). Since men and women are spread unequally across the academy, we hypothesized that gender differences will be smaller when we control for scientific field and academic position. For most writing practices, we found support for our hypothesis. However, we also uncovered some patterns that were not evident at the aggregate level. For example, at the aggregate level there is no significant difference between men and women when it comes to writing monographs, but in the humanities – where monographs matter most – men publish significantly more monographs than women.
When we specifically trace prestige, we discover that the NPI on average awards men 10% more points than women per publication. Thus statistical analysis reveals fewer differences in publishing between men and women than previously assumed, but also that the few differences that do exist end up mattering more than expected when it comes to the value assigned to those specific practices.
While much of the theoretical work on gender differences in academic publishing focus on the differences between men and women in general – describing, for example, how women take on a disproportionate share of the academic housework – these two studies highlight the similarities between the genders. They suggest that the biggest differences are not in how men and women approach academic publishing, but rather in where they find themselves dispersed throughout the academy. This is not to say that academic writing and publishing is not gendered, only that the way in which it is gendered differs depending on where in the academy it appears.
Critical ethnographic inquiries often look at how cultures – at various levels – shape concrete practices and how power is conferred through these practices. Quantitative studies – at both a local, institutional level and a larger nationwide level – can provide an important supplement to these inquiries by allowing the researcher to examine different writing practices and see evidence of how some groups systematically acquire greater power and prestige than others. Understanding the underlying patterns and having an eye to how they are situated at different levels, not only adds context to the ethnographic inquiry, but can also raise important follow up question. And in this way, the critical ethnographer can also shape future quantitative inquiry but drawing our critical gaze to patterns that can emerge when we start counting different things in different ways.
Nygaard, L. P., & Bahgat, K. (2018). What's in a number? How (and why) measuring research productivity in different ways changes the gender gap. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 32, 67-79.
Nygaard, L.P., Aksnes, D.W., and Piro, F.N. (forthcoming). Exploring the 'composition effect': how disaggregation reduces gender gaps in productivity.
Nygaard, L.P., Aksnes, D.W., and Piro, F.N. (forthcoming). Gendering excellence through productivity indicators.
