Document Type
Article
Source of Publication
Scientific Reports
Publication Date
12-1-2026
Abstract
Gender equity in science depends not only on who participates in research, but also on how their work is rewarded. We examine gender gaps in monetary returns to research productivity, pay, and credit attribution using a novel dataset linking salary and publication records for professors at U.S. public universities. While our main contribution shows that there is no robust evidence of a significant gender gap in monetary returns to publications, we uncover substantial heterogeneity across disciplines and authorship structures. Women in medical and health sciences experience a negative gap in returns of 10.7% relative to men for equivalent research output. The unconditional gender pay gap averages 15.4%, with variation across disciplines, ranging from 5.5% in agricultural sciences to 20.9% in social sciences. It declines to 4.9% after controls. Finally, women earn higher returns to solo-authored work but lower returns to larger co-author networks than men.
DOI Link
ISSN
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Volume
16
Issue
1
Disciplines
Business
Keywords
Credit attribution gap, Discrimination, Gender pay gap, Research productivity, Women in science
Scopus ID
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Śpiewanowski, Piotr; Stetsyuk, Ivan; and Talavera, Oleksandr, "Gender gap in returns to publications" (2026). All Works. 8342.
https://zuscholars.zu.ac.ae/works/8342
Indexed in Scopus
yes
Open Access
yes
Open Access Type
Gold: This publication is openly available in an open access journal/series