Jennifer Steinbachs:
> In publishing my (few) scientific articles, I have often
> wondered if I should publish under initials or under my
> full name. There are a number of studies (I don't have
> the refs. off the top of my head) demonstrating that
> papers with obvious female names are less cited that
> those with obvious male names. This is an important
> issue because, here in the US anyway, university faculty
> tenure is often linked to the number of citations one
> receives.
I was a member of the faculty board (it concists of ~60% academic
staff, 20% students and 20% administrative/technical staff, I was one
of the students) and we were going to employ a new physics associate
professor.
The Physics deparment didn't know which of two candidates they wanted,
but after lots of discussion they had set a 50 year old man first, then
a 30 year old woman second. Actually they wanted the woman, because they
have very few women at the departement and she was very well qualified,
but the man had more experience in the field and he had also more
publications.
In the faculty board things changed, however. One of the student
representants had a look at the issue and did some research. He found
out that even if the male candidates had more publications, he was only
cited half as many times pr. publication as the female candidate, and
this even if he was a lot more established in the field than her.
So with very little discussion, the female candidate got the job :)
> On the other hand, does one really want to hide behind
> initials? And then, sooner or later, people will know
> the name that goes with those initials...
At least that should be the goal if you plan to actually talk about your
research, not only write articles and get cited ;)
Magni :)
--
ulimit is good for you.
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