Despite Progress, Research and Innovation Still Lack Gender Equality

Elsevier is a global publisher with a history spanning nearly 150 years. We publish a significant portion of global research – about 20% of all research worldwide is published in Elsevier journals.

Beyond publishing, we are also an information and analytics company. Through this part of our business, we access comprehensive datasets from the research world, primarily through our Scopus database, which includes nearly 100 million records. Given our position in the market, we take our responsibility seriously and consider how we can positively impact our communities and wider society.

Inclusion and diversity have been areas of focus for Elsevier over the past decade. We started by examining our own processes – looking at representation within our journals, editors and conference speakers – and identifying opportunities to improve.

We realized that the data we have could help others make similar strides. We published our first gender report in 2015, which was focused on German research. This report analyzed the diversity of the researcher population, comparing participation and impact between men and women, and exploring ways to measure both. Two years later, we released our first global gender report, and we’ve continued to improve its scope and methodology ever since.

Our most recent report, published a few months ago, is the most comprehensive yet. It not only examines the representation of men and women in research globally but also provides granular insights by discipline, geography and career stage (early career, mid-career and late-career).

Additionally, it evaluates the impact of researchers in various ways. For instance, if you're an engineer, you can delve into the data by discipline, country and career stage to better understand the progress being made. This multidimensional approach helps researchers, institutions and policymakers identify gaps and develop targeted strategies for improving gender diversity in research.

There’s definitely some good news – we’re making progress. Looking at a 20-year time frame, we’ve seen substantial improvements. Women now represent over 41% of researchers globally, compared to just 28% two decades ago. That’s remarkable progress. Similarly, in STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – women’s representation has increased to nearly 40%.

However, when we look more closely, there are areas where progress is still lagging. For example, fields like mathematics, engineering and computer science still see women’s representation hovering in the 20–29% range. Additionally, among senior career cohorts, women only account for about 27%, so there’s clearly more work to do.

Another challenge is the publication gap. While women now make up 41% of researchers, they contribute to only 35% of published research. This gap highlights that while representation is improving, disparities in research output remain.

One of the most surprising gaps we identified was in patents. Women are involved in only about a quarter of patent submissions. Even more striking, only 3% of patent submissions come from women-only teams, which is extremely low. This underscores a significant area for improvement in supporting women’s contributions to innovation and intellectual property.

Women are often seen as pragmatic and multidisciplinary in their approach. Women are engaging in interdisciplinary research and influencing policies, so why not patents?

I believe we can support women in multiple ways. First, we need to provide training on the 'how' – how to move research into the innovation sphere, how to approach patent submissions and how to navigate the process effectively. Second, financial incentives could encourage more diverse teams to pursue patents. For example, providing funding or other resources specifically aimed at supporting women-led or diverse teams in innovation could make a significant difference.

Additionally, we should rethink how research is evaluated. Currently, evaluations are heavily based on bibliometrics, but we could broaden this to consider real-world impact, including patents. Patents are a tangible way to measure innovation and societal contribution, so integrating this into how we reward and recognize research could incentivize women to commercialize their work.

Ultimately, we need to combine educational support, financial incentives and a broader evaluation framework to create an environment where women feel empowered to innovate and bring their ideas to market.

Yes, policy is a particularly interesting area where women are outperforming expectations. In addition to policy, women also excel in multidisciplinary research and research related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

These areas address some of the world’s greatest challenges, such as education, peace and well-being, global health and gender equality. In all these fields, women are making a significant impact, and it’s exciting to see their research contributing to societal and policy changes.

As for the data, it all comes from Scopus, the world’s most comprehensive research database. Scopus includes not only journal articles but also other sources, such as policy documents. By analyzing these documents, we can track which research has been cited and contributed to policy development. This gives us a clear picture of the tangible impact women’s research is having on driving change in the real world.

In terms of action points, this finding highlights the importance of supporting women in these critical research areas and ensuring their work continues to reach policymakers. Encouraging collaboration across disciplines and investing in initiatives that amplify women’s contributions to SDG-related research could further strengthen their impact on policy and societal progress.

Any change starts with one person as a first step – so we should never feel deterred from getting started, even if we are just one person.

For example, the first gender report published by Elsevier was initiated by employees who felt that they wanted to make a difference. These people then started to find other like-minded people within the company who also wanted to create change, and the initiative grew. They identified how they could utilize the data at their disposal. Ultimately the report was created to raise awareness and help academic leaders and policy makers become more aware of the gaps that still exist, and to encourage them to think about what difference they can make – so it was almost a ripple effect from one person’s actions.

At an institutional level, there's a lot that we can do. Part of the reason why women don't progress to senior roles as much as men is often due to factors that academic leaders can influence. This might include the culture that the leaders create, the incentives they provide and their handling of biases that may exist in their institution.

It’s not always easy to be an equality and diversity (E&D) activist because we’re aiming for systemic change. But systemic change only happens when many people take action to create small changes that eventually lead to larger waves of change.

Some challenges are generic, such as work–life balance, managing family life if applicable and encountering bias barriers.

But there are unique paradigms in academia that can affect success for women. A key example being the funding model – researchers need to attract grants to progress in their careers. Grant allocations are another area of academia that the report assessed, and while there is progress for women, it’s not quite enough yet.

The second unique challenge to academia is how research is evaluated, which is typically through bibliometric factors such as citations. The report shows that we could better support women’s career progression in academia if we evaluated the success of research based on its impact on societal factors such as policies, on well-being or SDGs.

Elsevier is doing a lot of work to promote and advance EDI throughout the research and publishing process, which is conducted in collaboration with editors, partners, the research communities and other publishers. 

One example is by increasing representation among editors and reviewers. We’ve made huge progress here over the last few years. Ten years ago, only ~15% of editors were women, which is unbelievable. Now, it’s approximately 30% – still not where we want it to be, but it’s certainly progress. This figure also varies across different types of journals. In our Lancet journals, for example, over 50% of editors and reviewers are women, which is much more representative of the landscape of health research. 

Similarly, Elsevier holds many conferences and is actively working to increase equality and diversity across speaking panels. In 2015, 17% of speakers were women. Now, that figure sits at over 40%, which is fantastic.

Elsevier encourages equality and diversity by publishing guidelines and educational resources for researchers to help them ensure their research is representative. EDI is also an important consideration for our educational products. Human anatomy, for example, has been taught using male models historically. Elsevier developed a female model that is anatomically accurate. We’ve created resources to help clinicians diagnose skin disorders in people with different skin colors. These are just some examples of the major ongoing efforts at Elsevier to promote EDI.