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  • NATURE INDEX

Why is there a citations gender gap in Indian materials science?

Shobhana Narasimhan, chair of the Indian Academy of Science’s initiative on women in science, says attitudes in the field must change more quickly.
By
  1. Benjamin Plackett

    1. Benjamin Plackett is a freelance science journalist in Portsmouth, UK.

The global impact of India’s materials-science research is on the rise, with Nature Index data showing it has risen six places in the country ranking since 2019. But separate data from publisher Elsevier point to a more worrying problem: that papers authored by men in India have a greater citation impact than those written by women. And the gap is getting bigger. Elsevier’s data used a metric called field-weighted citation impact (FWCI), which compares citations received by individuals or groups with the average from similar papers in the field. In 2022, male materials scientists based in India had a 10% higher FWCI than women working in the country.

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Nature 636, S18 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-04004-x

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This article is part of Nature Index 2024 Materials science, an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content. For more information about Nature Index, see the homepage.

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