ArticlePloS one2022
Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- The promise of community-driven preprints in ecology and evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Women and household responsibilities under COVID-19 lockdowns: many steps backwards in implementing SDG 5 in South Africa.Frontiers in global women's health · 2025Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pediatric faculty: a report from nine academic institutions.Pediatric research · 2024Article
- Home-schooling and caring for children during the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK: emotional states, systems of support and coping strategies in working mothers.Frontiers in sociology · 2024Article
- Gender Composition in Biomedical Research Grant Submissions and Grant Review Panels Before Versus During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Journal of women's health (2002) · 2023Article
- Scientific authorship by gender: trends before and during a global pandemic.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The gender gap is a well-known problem in academia and, despite its gradual narrowing, recent estimations indicate that it will persist for decades. Short-term descriptive studies suggest that this gap may have actually worsened during the months of confinement following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In this work, we evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on female and male academics' research productivity using preprint drop-off data. We examine a total of 307,902 unique research articles deposited in 5 major preprint repositories during the period between January and May each year from 2017 to 2020. We find that the proportion of female authors in online repositories steadily increased over time; however, the trend reversed during the confinement and gender parity worsened in two respects. First, the proportion of male authors in preprints increased significantly during lockdown. Second, the proportion of male authors in COVID-19-related articles was significantly higher than that of women. Overall, our results imply that the gender gap in academia suffered an approximately 1-year setback during the strict lockdown months of 2020, and COVID-related research areas suffered an additional 1.5-year setback.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.