By Ruth A. Pagell*
(18 May 2023) It is almost a year since I put gender aside, leaving the piece on gender identity to be completed later. During this time while I was reviewing new books, evaluating QS’ new sustainability rankings, and immersing myself in Academic Freedom, there was a shift from SDGs to DEIs (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). This has led to a growing interest in gender identity which includes expanding gender options beyond female or male. I received a personal reminder about gender identity when I was asked if I wanted to change my gender when I recently renewed my passport (Forgey).
What impact is this having on publishers and rankers?
This article has four parts with supporting appendices:
- Background information, with terminology and organizations in Appendix A and country data and a new ranking of gender gaps by country in Appendix B
- Gender identity and publishers (Appendix C)
- Bibliometrics, rankers, and gender metrics (Appendix D)
- Resources, including new articles from various countries
What does gender identity have to do with bibliometrics and rankings? Leading up to this article, Ruth’s Rankings 51 Part 1 used data from CWTS Leiden to identify universities with a majority of female authors. In 51 Part 2, THE’ s World University Rankings was one of the sources used to identify women’s universities.
PART 1: BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Defining Gender Identity, (With details in Appendix A)
There are several sources for appropriate terminology. NPR, the US National Public Radio, has a list of organizations that provide vocabulary and other resources on gender identity and examples of the extensive vocabulary (Wamsley). Another recommended source is C4DISC, The Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion for Scholarly Communications’ section on gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation which emphasizes the differences among gender, sex, and gender identity and provides clear definitions of other terms. In 2022, the U.S. National Academies issued a report on improving the measurement of sex, gender, and sexual orientation (National Academies).
I use transgender, a person who was described by one gender at birth and the other today, for research issues and bibliometrics. I use non-binary as an umbrella term for other situations.
Gender Data (with country details and the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual Global Gender Gap Report in Appendix B).
The WEF publishes transgender data across multiple countries in its LGBTI Inclusion filter. In a 2021 survey of 27 countries, Germany and Sweden have the highest level of people identifying as not male or female (Masterson). Most other gender data are collected by individual countries.
A 2022 Pew Research Center survey reported 1.6 percent of U.S. adults identified as non-binary people (Pew). A follow-up article disaggregated the data and reported that five percent of people under 30 identified their sex as different from that at birth (Brown). Australia, England and Wales, Canada, and the United States introduced a gender identity question in their most recent census.
WEF has been publishing a Gender Gap report since 2006. Since no Ruth’s Rankings is complete without a ranking, see Appendix B for the rankings of the world and Asia/Pac countries with the top ten countries making the most progress in closing the gap. Number ones include Iceland for the world, New Zealand for Asia/Pac, and the Philippines for Asia.
Gender Identity and Multinational Organizations
In 2014 the OECD initiated The OECD Work on LGBTI+Inclusion. It is now in its third phase. The articles are updated but data are current through 2019. OECD also published a working paper specifically on LGBTQI+ students (McBrien, Rutigliano, & Sticca).
Times Higher Education partnered with UNESCO-IESALC to publish two reports on gender equality and university performance. THE published a summary report stating, “Transgender rights are a new frontier in the fight for gender equality, with policies of non-discrimination against transgender people existing in 70 percent of reporting universities globally, but completely missing in several countries.” There was not enough data to put into rankings (Bothwell, Part 1 and 2).
PART 2: GENDER IDENTITY AND PUBLISHING
Organizations working on the needs of non-binary authors
In 2019, there were no mechanisms for authors who changed their names due to a variety of reasons such as a change in gender identity or marital status to publish under their new names and rename their prior publications. In 2020, after initial work with a few individual publishers, trans scholars formed a grassroots Name Change Policy Working Group (NCPWG). A few months later, after receiving queries on name change practices, COPE (Committee on Publications Ethics), an international organization formed in 1997 to address issues related to research integrity and publication ethics, invited the NCPWG members to join a COPE working group on the topic. As a first result of this collaboration, the NCPWG published a vision endorsed by COPE, including high-level principles and best practices for changes in publishing. They are accessibility, comprehensiveness, invisibility, expediency and simplicity, and recurrency and maintenance. (Tannenbaum, Rettig, Schwartz, et. al).
COPE has continued working on its policies, surveying publishers who had already implemented name change policies and learning from their experiences.
Other organizations working with COPE on this initiative include the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC), NISO (National Information Standards Organization), and joining the initiative ORCID (Open Research and Contributor ID).
- CD4DISC, founded in 2017, focuses on DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) issues within scholarly communications. It includes university and library associations as members, such as the Association for University Presses and the Library Publishing Organization (Evers, V., Safer, R.).
- NISO, founded in 1939, supports libraries, publishers, and vendors and is a major player in the working group. It is the US representative to ISO, the International Organization for Standardization.
- ORCID rolled out in 2012, provides permanent numerical author identifiers and acknowledges its growing relationship with the name change initiative (ORCID)
A major step discussed by these groups is a move to recommend using ORCID identifiers instead of authors’ names https://twitter.com/ORCID_Org/status/1380224792826089473
NCPWG maintains a spreadsheet listing over 60 journals or publishers on compliance with COPE principles (Yes, Partially, Unclear), Further comments, and URL links to policy or announcement. The worksheet is updated as needed (Migenda). It also has a Twitter site (@ncpwg.org) that supports authors seeking to correct their names on past work and consult with publishers on inclusive name change policies.
Publishers
Publishers have diverse ways of complying with the COPE principles. A major publisher such as Springer Nature with over 3,500 imprints has a long form, (SNCS). A publisher like Frontiers, with over 200 publications, has a much simpler form (Frontiers).
Library and information science publications may be stand-alone members of COPE, such as the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) the publisher of College & Research Libraries journal. It announced its name change policy along with an article explaining the importance of the policy in its May 2022 issue. (Lazet & Watson).
Other examples of statements from Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, publishers of library and information science journals, are in Appendix C. Also included in the Appendix is information from Cell Press, part of the Elsevier family (Caputo). Cell Press shares a document that is sent to authors about Inclusion and Diversity in writing their articles and their own D and I status (Meadows).
PART 3: BIBLIOMETRICS, RANKERS, and GENDER (Appendix D)
Clarivate and Elsevier are the bibliometric data aggregators for the rankings. Clarivate has had a policy in place for name changes for their database. They do not collect gender data (Halevi). Elsevier contributes to gender data. They also make the inferred binary gender metadata available for free non-profit use as one of the datasets in the ICSR Labs Databricks environment (Falk-Krzesinski).
USNews US rankings added a section on diversity, showing male/female gender distribution plus a breakdown by minorities for each individual university. As with all US News metrics, there are no league tables for individual metrics.
Four global rankers include gender metrics in their university rankings. CWTS Leiden is the only organization with a separate gender ranking. THE Impact Rankings and QS Sustainability rankings use gender data and U-Multirank provides gender data for reports and as part of one indicator.
CWTS Leiden Gender Indicator ranks universities by percent of female authors. It derives its dataset from Clarivate. CWTS calculates its own gender identification. The dataset is available for public use. 70% of the authors have gender identities. Mahidol University, at 31 in the world, is tops in Asia/Pac.
2023 Leiden rankings will be published on June 21, using the same author identification methodology as in 2022.
THE Impact Rankings are arranged by SDGs. Gender data are used in SDGs’ 5 and 10. The gender of authors in SDG 5 is from Elsevier research as described in A Researcher Journey through a Gender Lens, on pages 119, 122-123 (Falk-Krzesinski) See comments from Chief data officer Duncan Ross and methodology for SDG 5 in Appendix C. Chiang Mai University is number one in SDG 5 Gender equality and University of Canberra is number one in SDG 10, reducing inequalities.
QS Sustainability Rankings has an Equality lens under Social Impact. Data on total number of persons per categories and total number of males are collected from universities to calculate the percent of not-male. The University of Sydney, at world number three, is number one in Asia/Pac.
U-Multirank is proactive in adding a non-binary diverse option in its institution survey and providing a new output measure, Gender Balance, in its rankings. It has also started publishing a Gender Monitor report.
See Appendix D for additional information on each ranking.
CONCLUSION
As more younger people are self-identifying as non-binary, they will have changed their names and gender before they start publishing. What does this mean for name change policies?
Before writing my conclusion, I reached out to a member of the NCPWG. They emphasized that the policies were never intended for just trans authors and will be increasingly used by authors who change their names due to marriage or divorce, religious conversion or other reasons unrelated to gender identity.
From my perspective, this article focuses on gender identity as it is reflected in publisher name change policies and the relationship between policies and rankings. The article shows how non-binary gender data is slowly finding their way into university rankings as rankers have been expanding their metrics from bibliometrics, to SDGs, to DEI. Since Equity has put the spotlight on the status of females as students, faculty, and administrators, and more respondents are open to sharing their non-binary status, there may be data in the future to perform more disaggregation for rankings purposes. Personally, I would like to see labelling go away!
PART 4: Resources for RR 55 plus new articles on gender from a variety of countries.
Bothwell, E. ed. (March, May 2022) THE Report: Gender Equality: How Global Universities are performing. Parts 1 and 2 UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC) and Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/digital-editions/gender-equality-how-global-universities-are-performing-part-1 and https://www.timeshighereducation.com/digital-editions/gender-equality-how-global-universities-are-performing-part-2
Brown, A. (7 June 2022). About 5% of young adults in the U.S. say their gender is different from their sex assigned at birth. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/
Caputo, J. (11 Apr to 1 May), Cell Press Head of Media and communications. emails
COPE Author name changes working group (13 Jan 2021). Update on COPE guidance regarding author name change., https://publicationethics.org/news/update-cope-guidance-regarding-author-name-changes
Evers, V. (20-27 April 2023). Email correspondence on C4DISC
Falk-Krzesinski, H. (4 Apr 2023).Co-chair Elsevier Gender taskforce and VP Research intelligence. email
Forgey, Q. (31 Mar 2022). State department will offer ”X”-gender marker for U.S. passports. Politico, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/31/state-department-will-offer-x-gender-marker-for-u-s-passports-00021965
Frontiers Science Communications (26 Jan 2023). New policy enables retrospective name change for authors. https://blog.frontiersin.org/2022/11/23/new-policy-enables-retrospective-name-changes-for-authors/
Halevi, G. (26 Apr 2023), Director the Institute for Scientific Information. email
Lazet, A. and Watson, B. ( May 2022) “Guest Editors: The case for retroactive author name changes” College & Research Libraries. https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/25432
Masterson, V. (21 Jun 2021). 6 Charts that reveal global attitudes to LGBT+ and gender identities in 2021. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/lgbt-gender-identity-ipsos-2021-survey/
Meadows, A. (3 Feb 2021). The Cell Press Inclusion and Diversity statement-An interview with Deborah Sweet. The Scholarly Kitchen. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/02/03/the-cell-press-inclusion-and-diversity-statement-an-interview-with-deborah-sweet/
McBrien, J, Rutigliano , A. & Sticca, A. (22 June 2022). The Inclusion of LGBTQI+ students across education systems: An overview. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 273. OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/91775206-en.
Migenda, J. ( April 4 – May ). Email conversations about the COPE spreadsheet. Entries in yellow are new to the list.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2022). Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26424
NISO (6 April 2021). NISO members approve proposal for a new recommended practice to update authors name changes. https://www.niso.org/press-releases/2021/04/niso-members-approve-proposal-new-recommended-practice-update-author-name
ORCID (undated) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – scroll down to ORCID DEI in the community, https://info.orcid.org/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-at-orcid/
Pagell, R. (5 July 2022 ). https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-rankings-51-part-1-gender-rankings-new-metrics-new-names-at-the-top/
Pagell, R. (1 Aug 2022). https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-rankings-51-part-2-gender-rankings-roles-and-rankings-of-womens-universities/
Pew Research Center (May 2022). 2022 Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel Wave 109. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/trans-pop-estimate-SR-topline_final.pdf
Safer, R. (19-27 April) email conversations on COPE, C4DISC
SNCS contact form: Inclusive name change policy (26 Jun 2023). Nature Portfolio. https://support.nature.com/en/support/solutions/articles/6000262879-sncs-contact-form-inclusive-name-change-policy
Tannenbaum, T. J., Rettig, I., Schwartz, H.M., et. al.(13 Jan 2021). A vision for a more trans-inclusive publishing world: guest editorial, COPE. https://publicationethics.org/news/vision-more-trans-inclusive-publishing-world
Wamsley, L.. (2 Jun 2021). A guide to gender identity terms, https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/996319297/gender-identity-pronouns-expression-guide-lgbt
NEW GENDER ARTICLES
Ceci, S., Kahn S., & Williams, W. (26 Apr 2023). Exploring gender bias in six key domains of academic science: An adversarial collaboration. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, (finds no bias in selected situations). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15291006231163179
Commodore, F. ( 4 Apr 2023). 6 of 8 Ivy Leagues will soon have women as presidents. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/6-of-8-ivy-leagues-will-soon-have-women-as-presidents-an-expert-explains-why-this-matters-201821
Dotse, D.W. (22 Mar 2023) University of Ghana launches Gender Policy. https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/university-of-ghana-launches-gender-policy.html
Horta, H. & Tang, L. (20 Apr 2023). Gender inequality and bias in Chinese universities: perceptions of male and female academics. Higher education research & development Since this is abstract only see a summary at https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/chinese-scholars-see-gender-equality-despite-contradictions
Ingabire, G. (23 Mar 2023). Varsities urged to promote gender equality. The New Times. Rwanda https://www.newtimes.co.rw/article/6068/news/rwanda/gender-ministry-calls-on-universities-to-promote-gender-equality. Rwanda has developed a “Men Engage in Gender Transformative Strategy, which aims to engage men and boys in achieving gender equality”
Kahn, A.S. (11 Mar 2023). Female VC’s unite for gender equality. The News (Pakistan). https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1048696-female-vcs-unite-for-gender-equality/
Lem, P. (20 Apr 2023). Chinese scholars’ see ‘gender equality despite contradictions’: Academics’ belief in merit-based promotion at odds with their experiences of discrimination, study finds. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/chinese-scholars-see-gender-equality-despite-contradictions
Mashininga, K. (30 Mar 2023). Women’s higher education remains a priority, says academic. University World News. (Zimbabwe) https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230327080313217
Walshe, J. (10 Mar 2023). Women in university leadership: A lot done but a lot more to do. University World News. (Ireland) https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230310140746346
Walshe, J. ( 24 Feb 2023). Women to become majority of university presidents. University World News (Ireland). https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230224130244438
Acknowledgments:
I received help from people from many sources, all of whom are recognized in the bibliography for the article including J Caputo, Cell Press, V.Evers, C4DISC, G. Halevi, ISI (Clarivate), H. Falk-Krzesinski, Elsevier, D. MacFarlane, QS, D. Ross, Times Higher Education, R.L. Safer, Oxford University Press, L.R. Waltman, CWTS-Leiden, and special thanks going to J. Mingenda of the Name Change Policy Working Group.
Ruth’s Rankings
A list of all Ruth’s Rankings and News Updates is here.
*Ruth A. Pagell is emeritus faculty librarian at Emory University. After working at Emory, she was the founding librarian of the Li Ka Shing Library at Singapore Management University and then adjunct faculty [teaching] in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaii. She has written and spoken extensively on various aspects of librarianship, including contributing articles to ACCESS – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3238-9674
