Does a gender-neutral name associate with the research impact of a scientist?. Issue 1 (February 2022) - Zhang, Ning
Highlights: We used the frequency of names by gender of babies registered in the united States, to calculate the name neutralization index scores for authors. The more neutral the name, the more citations the publications received. The neutral effect was more pronounced for authors with feminine names than for authors with masculine names. Abstract: Women have long suffered in both academia and industry from lower status, underrepresentation, unequal treatment, and other challenges based on gender. This paper explores whether a gender-neutral name is associated with the research impact of a scientist by examining three years of citations. The data for this study are derived from publications indexed in ISI's Web of Science (WoS) database from 2009 to 2015. By assigning a name neutralization index score to each author, we investigate the relationship between the neutralization index and citations and find the following results: (1) generally, the more neutral the name, the more citations the publications received; (2) the neutral effect was more pronounced for authors with feminine names than for authors with masculine names.