Gender differences in scientific performance: A bibliometric matching analysis of Danish health sciences Graduates

• Our study shows that there is practically no difference between men and women in the productivity measured as the number of articles published.
• We base our analysis on matching methods. Using this fine-grained analysis we found a much smaller difference between genders with respect to scientific productivity than previous studies.
• Furthermore, we found very little (and overall statistically insignificant) difference in the number of received citations between men and women.

The aim of this study is to compare PhD students’ performance with respect to gender using a number of matching methods. The data consists of fine-grained information about PhD-students at the Institute of Clinical Research at the University of Southern Denmark. Men and women are matched controlling for sub-disciplinary affiliation, education, year of enrolment and age. Publications and citations are identified in Web of Science.Our study shows that the average total number of publication is slightly higher for men than for women. Excluding the “other” group of publications from the analyses reveals that there is a negligible difference between men and women in terms of published articles. A substantial proportion of women is on maternity leave during the time period analysed and thus we would expect their productivity to be considerably lower. Similarly, we have found very little difference between the citation impact of men and women.We find matching methods to be a promising set of methods for evaluating productivity and impact of individuals from various sub-fields, universities and time periods as we are able to discard some of the underlying factors determining the results of analyses of gender differences in productivity and citation impact.