Working groups, gender, and publication impact of Canada’s ecology and evolution faculty
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Working groups are recognized as a highly effective method for synthesizing science. It is less clear if participating in working groups benefits individual researchers, or if benefits differ between men and women. This is a critical question, for the working group method is not sustainable if the benefit to science comes at a cost to academic careers or gender equity. Here we analyze the publications of Canadian university faculty specialized in ecology and evolution ( N = 1244), a field that has embraced the working group method. Researchers were more likely to have participated in a working group as their academic age and prior H-index increased, but controlling for these factors there was no effect of gender. Using a longitudinal analysis, we find that researcher H-indices accrue 14% faster following their first working group publication, regardless of gender. Part of this acceleration may be the 3- to 5-fold higher citation rate of working group synthesis publications. In a survey ( N = 169), researchers also report indirect benefits of working groups, at similar rates for men and women. Working groups are therefore good not just for science but also for scientists. Formalized mechanisms for collaborations such as working groups may also offset gender inequities in science.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.072 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.017 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".