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Turning the corner on gender diversity in chemistry

By bibiana campos seijo, may 11, 2019 | a version of this story appeared in volume 97, issue 19.

• Out and proud
• 9 ways to motivate others
• What US chemists made in 2022, according to the ACS salary survey
• Lanxess to cut jobs in Germany, elsewhere
• Making space in STEM for people with disabilities

For nearly 20 years, C&EN has reported the representation of women among the faculties of research-active chemistry departments in the US. Since 2009, the data have been collected through a survey conducted by the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity (OXIDE), a project aimed at reducing “inequitable policies and practices that have historically led to disproportionate representation on academic faculties with respect to gender, race-ethnicity, disabilities, and sexual orientation.”

The gender scorecard targets the 50 chemistry departments that, according to the National Science Foundation, spend the most on chemistry research. While this ranking may look arbitrary, it reflects the departments that have the largest financial footprint and train a large number of students as chemistry PhDs. As we strive for inclusive excellence, faculty and students need to be diverse at levels commensurate with the population. Unfortunately, they are not. Faculty in particular are lagging behind.

The latest ranking, on page 18 , reports that 20% of faculty in these chemistry departments are women. That’s less than half the percentage of women graduating with PhDs in chemistry today.

Through National Diversity Equity Workshops (NDEWs)—held every 2 years since 2011—OXIDE has engaged chemistry department chairs around the country to identify the barriers that have hindered the success of women and underrepresented minorities in the tenure track and, importantly, to define strategies for suppressing or removing these barriers. Chief among these strategies have been recommended actions for departments to improve their diversity climates, including creating diversity committees, which many departments have adopted. OXIDE has also emphasized fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion paralleling the community efforts to create a safety culture. That is, diversity and inclusion have to be integrated into everything a department does. OXIDE’s list of actions is quite extensive and applicable to any chemistry department, not just the top 50. Bill Tolman, the 2017 OXIDE Diversity Catalyst Lecturer and former chair of chemistry at the University of Minnesota, reported that after he attended his first NDEW, he used the recommended actions as a to-do list and proceeded to check off each item. In his own assessment, the outcome was a healthier climate in Minnesota’s Chemistry Department and a modest improvement in its demographics.

NDEWs provide a way for chairs and champions of chemistry departments to learn from each other and from social scientists about how to advance a climate of diversity. So far, 39 of the top 50 chemistry departments have had representation in at least one of the first four workshops.

According to OXIDE data from 2016–17, the average percentage of female professors in those departments (20%) is larger than the percentage of women in the departments that did not attend any NDEW (17%). Even more significant is the large deviation for the percentage of assistant professors for departments who were represented (29%) and those who weren’t (12%). Participation in an event such as the NDEWs may correlate with increased gender diversity in a department. As this is an activity that few other disciplines are doing, there is reason to be optimistic about chemistry. We are making a difference in the representation of women by actively engaging to correct the problem.

Meanwhile, the US National Academy of Sciences just announced its latest class, and the percentage of women in the group that was inducted was 40%, the most ever elected. And the recipients of the 2019 ACS National Awards included more women than ever before.

Chemistry is clearly turning a corner. The glass ceiling may not be entirely broken yet, but we are making progress.

Views expressed on this page are those of the author and not necessarily those of ACS.

This editorial was updated on May 13, 2019, to include additional data.

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Is there a gender gap in chemical sciences scholarly communication? †

First published on 28th January 2020

The Royal Society of Chemistry is committed to investigating and addressing the barriers and biases which face women in the chemical sciences. The cornerstone of this is a thorough analysis of data regarding submissions, review and citations for Royal Society of Chemistry journals from January 2014 until July 2018, since the number and impact of publications and citations are an important factor when seeking research funding and for the progression of academic career. We have applied standard statistical techniques to multiple data sources to perform this analysis, and have investigated whether interactions between variables are significant in affecting various outcomes (author gender; reviewer gender; reviewer recommendations and submission outcome) in addition to considering variables individually. By considering several different data sources, we found that a baseline of approximately a third of chemistry researchers are female overall, although this differs considerably with Chemistry sub-discipline. Rather than one dominant bias effect, we observe complex interactions and a gradual trickle-down decrease in this female percentage through the publishing process and each of these female percentages is less than the last: authors of submissions; authors of RSC submissions which are not rejected without peer review; authors of accepted RSC publications; authors of cited articles. The success rate for female authors to progress through each of these publishing stages is lower than that for male authors. There is a decreasing female percentage when progressing through from first authors to corresponding authors to reviewers, reflecting the decreasing female percentage with seniority in Chemistry research observed in the “Diversity landscape of the chemical sciences” report. Highlights and actions from this analysis form the basis of an accompanying report to be released from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Introduction

There have been previous studies into gender influences of science publications. 3–16 Other publishers have interrogated their own publications e.g. Elsevier, 3 Nature publishing, 4,5 Institute of Physics (IOP) publishing, 6 Functional Ecology 7 and American Geophysical Union (AGU). 8 Studies by the wider community have focussed on a particular publisher e.g. Frontiers journals, 9 or a particular journal e.g. eLife, 10 New Zealand Journal of Ecology, 11 Behavioral Ecology 12 and Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 13 Some have been multi-disciplinary, spanning science and medicine 14,15 and some are more specific to a particular field of interest e.g. astronomy. 16 These studies have given evidence of the under-representation of women as authors, 3–6,8–10,14,16 editors, 7–10 reviewers 4–11 and members of editorial boards. 6 Some of them have investigated acceptance rates for authors, 6–13 some considered gender interactions between different roles in the publishing process e.g. reviewers and authors 8–10,12,13,15 and some investigated potential gender bias in citations. 3,16 Most agree that female percentage decreases with seniority of authorship and that female percentages are increasing over time, although the times estimated for gender parity are long without intervention. 14 We have conducted this study since none of these previous studies has specifically focussed on the chemical sciences and its sub-disciplines, none were so broad in scope as this, and we required analysis of our own publication metadata to understand the demographics of our Chemistry research community better and identify specific points of action relevant to us. We believe that this detailed synopsis would be of particular interest and relevance to the authors, reviewers, readers and editors who make up our Royal Society of Chemistry's community; it shows how their individual contributions make up the bigger picture, especially since they would not usually have access to the data on which it's based. The RSC publishes many journals that cover a range of Chemistry sub-disciplines with a variety of different impact factors and editorial models, which allows us to investigate a wide scope of gender relationships and facets across these.

Here we use techniques described in the methodology section to break down and analyse the stages of the publication process by gender for submissions to RSC journals between January 2014 and July 2018 and inter-RSC citations between August 2011 and September 2018. We have divided this manuscript into stages that broadly align to a stage in the publication process. Section A covers the background gender characteristics of chemical science researchers. We then investigate further the subset of those authors who have submitted articles to the Royal Society of Chemistry in Section B. Our submissions undergo an initial pre-screening process to determine their overall suitability for the journal. In this paper, we investigate whether there are gender differences evident in the decision to reject a submission without peer review or to progress it through, and the editors who decide it (Section C). RSC articles undergo single-blind review, so gender characteristics of reviewers are described in Section D, and the review recommendations that they make in Section E. Publication is not the end of the story though, so we look at various gender issues in citation behaviour in Section G, and the long-term effect of these publication and citation imbalances on the gender distribution of living chemists with highest H-index scores in Section H. We will not cover the gender make-up of RSC editorial boards since this was covered in the “Diversity landscape of the chemical sciences report”. 1

Within each of these sections, there are numbered sub-analyses to explore different facets. Variables investigated include author position (corresponding and first authors are investigated in the greatest detail), corresponding author country, number of submissions, number of authors and submission date. As publishers of the submissions under investigation, it was also possible for us to subset the articles by reviewer gender, number of revisions, editor gender, editorial model of journal, chemistry sub-discipline, and significantly, impact factor of journal for each sub-discipline. The latter displayed significant trends of decreasing female author proportions of submissions and publications with increasing impact factor.

For every figure shown in this paper the corresponding numbers plotted, with percentages and confidence intervals, significances and p -values are given in the tables of the ESI. †

Note that this study reports gender gaps, but has not fully explained their causes. It is more obvious whether bias is the cause of such gaps by conducting experiments which compare multiple reviews of the same research which differ only in their displayed author names and genders, so as to control for other variables, but this was not possible here (since this is outside the usual publication processing pipeline which was being investigated). It should be noted that one such experiment to investigate race and gender bias in the initial review of NIH grant proposals 17 did not find evidence of bias.

Within this paper, we focus on the technical details of the methodology and analysis. Whilst we make observations, and enter into some basic discussion, wider discussion of the key points and resulting actions are made in an accompanying report to be released by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Methodology and materials

The techniques presented were used in two important areas: gender mapping and paper categorisation – as both are important in such studies. The first is important not just for transparency but also because we need to understand the biases that are inherent in gender to name mapping. The second is important since chemistry is not homogeneous and we also need to characterise by different sub-disciplines. We attempted to standardise on techniques and methods and chose statistical methods, which were easy to explain, flexible, and could be visualised. Where possible we used a binominal significance test for simpler analytics. For more in depth consideration of multiple variables we used Generalised Linear Models.

The techniques and methods described in this paper were implemented via R 18 within the RStudio environment. 19 Most graphics were produced using the package ggplot2. 20

In Section B3 we explore the impact on the scope of this study of using this method by investigating how its results vary with author country, and compare these with an alternative method, the Python-based package “gender-guesser” (version 0.40). 24 This package uses a similar method to the ONS method above, whereby an input name is queried by comparison against an input data set of names and genders (which has been gathered from a wide range of countries). The name is then assigned a gender of male , female , mostly_female (which we have grouped together with female ), mostly_male (which we have grouped together with male ), unknown or andy (androgynous, which we have grouped together with unknown ).

We found that both methods gave similar results but that the ONS method gave a better yield of Asian names than gender-guesser. As further validation of our method, in Section A, we found that the ONS method gave similar overall female percentages of chemistry researchers to the results of a dataset where gender was explicitly declared.

As mentioned, article categorisation has been used in the live production server as a means of navigating RSC articles and users have found this useful. Basic validation has been performed by comparison of all article/category pairs in our data set of submissions found by this method versus those from the categories that the journal belongs to (according to Table ESI_1 † mappings) and the results are shown in Fig. ESI_2 in the ESI. † Note that both methods allow the categorisation of each submission into multiple categories, but the article categorisation method finds more categories for each submission with a mean of 1.8 categories per article compared to 1.25 using the journal category method, which is why the total number of mappings is higher for most categories by this method. In general, we see that the trends in article/categorisation pairings for each of the different categories follow the same trends for the results from article categorisation, journal category and the overlap between them.

The lists of terms exemplifying each category, and threshold values, were tuned during development in 2013, and have not been adjusted since then.

Statistical methods

Furthermore, we present models that partition submissions by journal, chemistry sub-discipline and impact factor to allow gender effects to be observed independent of wide variations across these groups.

It is important to control for quality of submissions so that the effects of gender are more apparent. We would have liked to have a control for quality from as early on in the publication process as possible, so investigated whether a flag that indicates whether a submissions is single-authored could be used as a proxy for quality of a submission. The reasoning behind this is that single-authored papers: tend to be by established researchers (who do not need to include a supervisor as a co-author); indicate a certain amount of confidence; and avoid any ambiguity of mixed-gender or different-sized teams. However, as we demonstrate in Section C2, there is actually a higher proportion of these single-authored submissions that are rejected without peer review compared to multiple author submissions. This means that this would not be an appropriate quality for control. As an alternative, we considered using the control of reviewer consensus of first round reviews where appropriate since articles that are accepted with reviewer consensus might be expected to be less controversially higher quality papers than those where at least one reviewer suggested either rejection or major revisions. This control would also have the advantage that there are multiple reviews for each article which controls for all other manuscript features e.g. impact of journal, submission volumes to journal, number of authors, quality of submission etc. 28 However, using a control which is dependent to one of our key outcomes of reviewer decision is somewhat circular, so we have not pursued this. Since we have not found an appropriate control for quality, care should be taken in the interpretation of results since when we subset by gender it is possible that we are not comparing submissions of equal quality and that this may be mis-interpreted as gender bias. Thus, we are identifying gender gaps and differences rather than gender bias.

We used the glm function from the stats package (version 3.5.1) in R to perform the binomial GLM calculation. This technique allows us to explore the significance of additional variables (for example journal Impact Factor in the example above). We can calculate whether the addition of a variable to a model has significant effect by calculating the Chi square analysis of variance (or deviance) (ANOVA) significance tables 29 of the model using the anova function of the stats package (version 3.5.1). GLMs make it relatively simple to study the effects of interactions between, typically categorical, variables. For each model we show plots, equations, Chi-square p -values, and significance. The effect function of the effects package (version 4.0-3) was used to create an output object suitable for plotting with ggplot2 from the GLM model output.

Female percentages were calculated as the percentage of the population with known gender, so that people with unknown gender were omitted from the percentage calculation. In this study we are primarily focused on the difference between male and female genders which may be more apparent when comparing names that are more clearly associated with a particular gender. Inclusion of more gender ambiguous names that could not be assigned a gender reliably would introduce other considerations. For example, we consider the geographical implications of this scope definition further in Section B3. However, we highlight that the approach gave good agreement between baseline female percentages calculated from different sources, regardless of how the gender was obtained, geography and sample size (see Section A3 for further background to this decision).

For the GLM models, this meant that for any model we filtered out any data with an unknown gender in the outcome or variables being tested in that model.

Much of this study is broken down into “original submissions” – this terminology is used to clarify potential ambiguity regarding multiple revisions being submitted for each article. An “original submission” counts all of the multiple revisions of an article with a particular manuscript ID only once. Some sections of this paper consider breakdowns per original submissions, some consider breakdowns per review of each revision of those original submissions, and some refer to the final outcome of each original submission which is the outcome of the last revision within the time period that the data was gathered.

(A) Background chemical sciences gender landscape

(a1) higher education statistics agency (hesa) female researcher percentage.

According to these interrogations, there are 9255 UK chemistry researchers (staff and PhD students) of which 33.6% are female. Note that according to HESA rounding strategy, this percentage has been calculated from numbers that were rounded to the nearest 5. While it is possible for the gender recorded by HESA to have the values “male”, “female” or “other”, the numbers with “other” gender round to zero under this rounding strategy.

Within this headline gender distribution, there are differences by seniority of job, as can be seen below.

Fig. 1 shows a breakdown by contract level for the staff dataset, additionally with all doctorate students from the student dataset shown in the lowest row. The same filters were applied as above.

A steep drop-off of women with rising “seniority” is in line with the RSC breaking the Barriers report 2 (“the Leaky Pipeline”). Above the professorial level, the sample size reduces considerably which means that trends are no longer significant.

The HESA data suggested that the percentage of chemists who are female is 33.6%, and the number of UK research chemists who are female is 3110.

(A2) RSC membership data female researcher percentage

To get a better picture of the gender distribution in chemistry research, this overall female percentage has been broken down into that at different levels of RSC membership included. The results have been plotted in Fig. 2 .

Again, we see a decrease in the overall numbers as the levels increase in seniority, ascending the plot.

RSC membership data suggested that the percentage of UK research chemists who are female is 31.6%, and the number of chemists who are female is 2590.

(A3) All authors data female researcher percentage

There is good consistency between the female percentages of all three potential baseline sources (HESA, RSC membership and all RSC authors) despite differences in their sample sizes, geographies and methods of obtaining them. We have chosen to use the value based on all RSC authors, which sets the baseline of female percentage of chemistry researchers at 35.8%, since this is most relevant to the populations and methods being interrogated further in this report. The consistency in the baselines was also considered to validate our methods for estimating gender from first names, as the proportions from HESA where gender was directly known matched those of the chemistry researchers where gender was not directly known but inferred from first name.

We therefore have a baseline for the number of female chemists of 35.8%. However, note that in some cases we will use different baselines specific to corresponding authors, first authors and reviewers when breaking down fluctuations within these groups.

(B) Gender characteristics of submissions to RSC journals

(b1) female percentage of submissions by author role.

The female percentage of corresponding authors is significantly lower than the baseline of female percentage of chemistry researchers. The female percentage of corresponding authors is closest to the female percentage of HESA chemistry researchers at the level “Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Senior Research fellow” in Section A1. This is in line with the general convention that corresponding authors are largely heads of research groups.

The female percentage of first authors is significantly higher than the baseline female percentage of chemistry researchers.

The female percentage of first authors is closest to the female percentage of HESA chemistry researchers at the levels “Doctorate students” and “Research assistant, teaching assistant” in Section A1. This is in line with the general convention that first authors are largely the researchers who conduct the research and primarily write it up.

However, we will not consider and compare female percentages of de-duplicated female authors of submissions as baseline figures in in the rest of this paper, but rather female percentages of authors of original submissions without deduplication . Because of this, we will use the percentages of original submissions from female corresponding authors and first authors: 23.9% and 33.4% respectively. These differ from the percentages of unique authors above due to skew caused by some authors having submitted many articles, as will be discussed in the next section.

(B2) Female percentage of submissions by number of original submissions

Fig. 3 shows the relationship between corresponding author gender with the number of submissions and the analogous graph for first authors is in Table B2b of the ESI. † The female percentage baseline shown is the average for original submissions from corresponding authors. One point for concern is that there are up to 610 original submissions from each unique corresponding author name (based on first name, middle name and last name) and 522 from each first author name. Names that correspond to the higher end of this scale are not likely to be from a single author but are most likely from multiple authors with the same name. Only numbers of submissions up to 30 are shown, to filter out this common name problem, and because significances are low for higher submission numbers due to the low sample sizes involved. For both first authors and corresponding authors there is a steady drop in the percentage of females as number of submissions increases although care should be taken as the confidence intervals also increase due to smaller sample sizes as the number of initial submissions increases.

This lower submission rate of female authors is the source for our observation in Section B1 that the percentage of original submissions from female corresponding and first authors was less than the percentage of unique female corresponding and first authors respectively.

(B3) Female percentage of submissions by country

The country where most of the corresponding authors who submit to the RSC are from is China. However, the majority of these authors do not have first names whose gender can be deduced from their first names and similarly, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Turkey have very high proportions of corresponding authors with unknown genders. This is because our gender-assignment code uses Westernised name data sets and is not as successful with non-Westernised names. This issue would not easily be solved by simply using a more geographically diverse reference name-gender data set for comparison since, for example, it is common for Chinese, Indian, South Korean, Taiwanese and Singaporean names to be non-gender-specific and there are additional ambiguities when Asian names are converted into Latin alphabets for matching.

In our methodology, we stated that we would omit people whose gender was unknown from percentage calculations and analyses. We can see from these figures that their inclusion would complicate the results and their interpretation-comparing traits of those with unknown gender alongside male and female would not simply compare gender differences between these sample sets, but also introduce geographical differences. We should however be aware that, as we can see from Fig. 5 , by omitting people with unknown gender we have effectively filtered out more people from Asian countries.

To explore whether a potential alternative method might increase the inclusion rate of non-Westernised author genders we have performed an additional comparison of our gender-inference method (which we will refer to as the “ONS method”) with that of another method, “gender-guesser”. Using this program, we calculated the genders of the corresponding authors, and compared them with those calculated by the ONS method. The percentage of genders of corresponding author names that matched those from the ONS method were 82.7%, which is good agreement. The distribution of these corresponding author genders by continent in Fig. 5 are very similar to our ONS method and indeed, the ONS method is able to assign more genders to Asian corresponding authors than gender-guesser although we should note that analysis of only known genders by both this ONS method and gender-guesser will under-represent Asian corresponding authors. In fact, of the submissions from corresponding authors with unknown gender (from the ONS method), 84.7% are from Asian countries by this breakdown. We discuss the implications of this further in the Conclusions of this paper.

We will explore geographical imbalances further in subsequent studies but the scope of this study focuses on gender disparities, and these will be more apparent by comparison of submissions from authors with names which are more readily associated with a particular gender.

(B4) Submission co-authorship characteristics

In Fig. 6 we investigate whether the number of authors of articles changes with the gender of their corresponding author.

In a previous investigation for internal use at the Royal Society of Chemistry we investigated some of these effects, e.g. gender distribution of single-authored papers and author position of female researchers, in more detail and here we will summarise the results. All authors (not just corresponding or first authors) were considered for publications to RSC journals from 2016 to 2018 and genders were assigned by the same mapping methods as in this study. Submissions were divided into sets defined by number of authors, and then for authors at each position in the author list the percentage of female authors ascertained, and we used a binomial significance test for comparison against the overall background female proportion. These percentages have been plotted in Fig. 7 for the various numbers of authors and author positions for which they were calculated and asterisks indicate the significance of the p -values of their binomial significance tests.

Low female percentages are shown in purple and indicate that males are more likely to appear towards the end of the author list – traditionally the places held by the heads of research groups. Female enrichment is indicated by turquoise and is more likely to appear at the start of the author list (as we have seen in Section B1 – the female percentage of first authors is higher than all authors and corresponding authors). Other observations with this data set are that:

• Female corresponding author papers involve more institutions ( p -value = 0.004).

• The longer the author list, the more likely they are to contain a higher female/male ratio.

• Female corresponding author papers involve more authors ( p -value = 1 × 10 −6 ).

We have separately investigated the percentage of female corresponding and first authors, and will now investigate how the female percentage of corresponding authors differs with first author gender. Cases where the first author and corresponding author are the same person have been removed since these will skew results towards same-sex authorship and not truly reflect co-authorship trends. The full set of figures for the breakdown is given in Table B4b of the ESI, † but to summarise, the female percentage of corresponding authors for female first authors is 27.7% but that for male first authors is 19.2% and both differ significantly ( p = 7.30 × 10 −75 and p = 9.61 × 10 −200 respectively) from the baseline of the average for corresponding authors of 23.9%. We can see a tendency for female corresponding authors to publish with female first authors.

We observe the “gender homophily” (higher than expected occurrence of men co-authoring with men and women co-authoring with women) that has been noted previously in the life sciences. 15

(B5) Female percentage of submissions by date

There is no obvious trend, based on quarter, of the percentage of female corresponding authors or first authors since 2013. It should, however, be noted that this is a short time span to monitor changes over, especially in comparison with the other similar gender studies mentioned in the introduction, the majority of which showed tendencies towards gender parity over time. 9

(B6) Female percentage of submissions by chemistry sub-discipline and impact factor

In general, we see similar trends for the female percentage of corresponding authors and first authors in the different chemistry sub-disciplines – for example, Food and more biological subjects show higher female percentages, and Organic , Inorganic , Physical and Energy show lower female percentages. Although our exact methods differ from those reported by the IOP in their similar analysis, 6 our values of 39.5% for submitted corresponding authors of environmental articles and 32.9% for materials articles are in line with those that they found of 39% and 32.9% respectively.

We have seen how author gender differs within chemistry sub-disciplines, and can now consider the effect of a second variable – impact factor – on the corresponding author gender within each chemistry sub-discipline by applying a GLM model. Comparisons involving impact factors across all sub-disciplines should be avoided, since there are large differences between the typical number of citations for different fields, which is why we have modelled and presented results separately for each sub-discipline. Impact factors are given with other journal information in Table ESI_1 of the ESI † and are based on 2017 Journal Citation Reports® (Clarivate Analytics, June 2018). Note that impact factors of Energy & Environmental Science (30.06) and Chemical Society Reviews (40.182) were omitted to give a more consistent range of impact factors across the different journals over which the models are fitted.

(C) Gender characteristics of editors and rejection without peer review

(c1) gender characteristics of editors.

The female percentage of in-house RSC editorial staff is much higher than that of the external associate editors, who are academic researchers (with a female percentage in line with the baseline for chemistry researchers). This is not surprising since RSC in-house editors are not academic researchers, although many of them were previously graduates from the chemical sciences, either with undergraduate or postgraduate degrees. Indeed when considering the “leaky pipeline”, the RSC is an example of one of the alternative employment destinations where many female researchers go to having left academia. Editors of submissions to journals with a hybrid model, or other mixtures of internal and external editors, have female percentages somewhere between these two extremes, as might be expected.

(C2) Rejection without peer review

The above figures apply no controls, so while they give us an idea of overall gender distribution, the reduction in female percentage of corresponding authors through this initial “rejection before peer review” stage and lower female success rates may be because we are not comparing similar types of submissions. To compare more similar sets of submissions we show the results of a GLM model of proportion of submissions rejected without peer review and corresponding author gender with the test control whether the submissions have a single author (as discussed in the methodology) in Fig. 12 .

The single-authored submissions show a much higher proportion of rejection at this initial stage of the publication process, which indicates that they are not a good proxy for quality to use as a control. Nevertheless, they are an interesting subset to compare, and a higher proportion of submissions from female single authors are rejected without peer review than male single authors. These proportions are not different from what might be expected for female and male corresponding authors publishing with other (potentially other gender) authors.

(C3) Rejection without peer review broken down by editor gender and journal editorial model

We can see from Fig. 13b and its ANOVA output that while corresponding author gender is significant (a higher proportion of submissions from female corresponding authors are rejected without peer review than those from male corresponding authors) and editor gender is significant (a higher proportion of submissions are rejected without peer review by female editors than male editors), there is no significant interaction between these two variables. The proportion of submissions rejected without peer review when both variables are considered is as expected from the given the variables separately. As such, no evidence can be seen that female or male editors are positively or negatively inclined to reject more submissions without peer review from female corresponding authors.

In a similar way, we can investigate whether the level of rejection without peer review of external associate editors is the same as that of in-house editors via a binomial GLM model ( Fig. 13b ).

To simplify the analysis, we have filtered out editorial models with small sample sizes. From the ANOVA results, the editorial model of the journal is significant, both on its own and when it interacts with corresponding author. There are higher rates of rejection without peer review from in-house editors than associate editors with hybrid models lying in between them. “Associate editors with in-house pre-submission assessment” have the lowest rates of rejection without peer review, but note the low sample numbers for these.

From the ANOVA results, the relationship between the proportion of rejected submissions without peer review with editorial model given its relationship with corresponding author is significant. In particular, there is a larger positive difference between the proportion of rejected submissions without peer review for female corresponding authors compared to that for male corresponding authors for journals with in-house and hybrid editorial models – indicating higher gender disparity for these journal models. While “Associate editors with in-house pre-submission assessment” seem to show a much smaller and opposite gender difference, the differences between the male and female corresponding authors are not significant.

(D) Gender characteristics of reviewers

(d1) gender breakdown of reviewers, their invitations and responses.

If we consider the percentage of reviews performed by female reviewers (no longer de-duplicated by name) it is even less, at 20.8%. This difference is because the average number of reviews by female reviewers over this time period was 5.69 which is significantly less than the value for male reviewers of 7.05. So not only are there less female reviewers, but each of them perform fewer reviews than their male counterparts do.

The full set of figures for the breakdown is given in Table D1 of the ESI, † but to summarise, the female percentage of reviewer invitation responses was 21.5% agreed, 21.7% declined, 19.6% failed to respond and all differ significantly ( p = 5.00 × 10 −10 , p = 1.15 × 10 −20 and p = 1.85 × 10 −28 respectively) from the baseline of the average for female reviewer invitations of 17.5%. A significantly lower percentage of female reviewers fail to respond to their reviewer invitations than male reviewers (more female potential reviewers respond). Out of those that respond, there is no significant difference between the female percentages who accept or decline their invitations.

We can therefore see that the low female percentage of reviews performed by female reviewers is predominantly due to them being invited less than male reviewers. When the Institute of Physics investigated this issues they found that male reviewers were invited to review more than female reviewers, and that there was “no significant difference in the propensity for men or women to accept review invitations”. 6 The American Geophysical Union also found that women were invited to review less than men, but that they had a slightly higher decline rate. 8 The journal Functional Ecology found that women female reviewers were less likely to respond to reviewer requests, but if they did, they were more likely to respond positively. 7

(D2) Relationship between reviewer gender, corresponding author gender and editor gender

There are significantly more reviews from female reviewers for submissions from female corresponding authors. This may be because female corresponding authors are more likely to suggest female reviewers for their papers, or because editors are more likely to select female reviewers for these papers or because female reviewers are more likely to agree to review papers from female corresponding authors. We do not have the data to test the first possible contributory factor but we can investigate the second two.

A binomial GLM model of the outcome proportion of invitations to female reviewers changing with corresponding author gender and reviewer response is shown in Fig. 14a .

The outcome in Fig. 14a is the proportion of all invitations that are to female reviewers, rather than the proportion of reviews , as in the previous section. However, the same trend is apparent with more invitations going to female reviewers for submissions from female corresponding authors. The biggest difference in female proportion of reviewers with corresponding author gender is observed for reviewers who accept their invitations rather than those who decline or fail to respond. It can be seen that female reviewers accept significantly more invitations for submissions from female corresponding authors and less for submissions from male corresponding authors. From the ANOVA chi square test p -value the additional consideration of reviewer response is significant, and so the increased proportion of submissions from female corresponding authors having a female reviewer is a combination of editors inviting them more, and the female reviewers being more likely to accept these papers.

A previous study of publications in Frontiers journals found substantial gender homophily – with editors of both genders showing substantial same-gender preference when appointing reviewers. 9 In Fig. 14b we consider the effect on female reviewer proportion of corresponding author gender together with editor gender.

The variable EditorGender has a significant effect on reviewer gender – there is a higher female proportion of reviewers for reviews with female handling editors than male editors. Interactions between corresponding author gender and editor gender are also significant – there is a higher proportion of female reviewers for female corresponding authors for submissions with male editors than female editors.

(D3) Gender characteristics of reviews by date, number of reviewers and number of revisions

There was a slight increase in the female percentage of reviewers through 2014 but there have been no significant changes in the percentage of female reviewers since then.

There is no set number of reviewers required for a submission. Fig. 15b shows the distribution of the total number of reviewers for each submission, and the numbers plotted and their percentage breakdown by gender is given in Table D3b of the ESI. †

If multiple versions of an article are submitted then the number of reviewers of each version are included separately.

We have shown the total numbers plot and not just the percentage gender breakdown to show that most submissions have 2 reviewers, but 3 and 1 are also common. The percentage breakdown of these figures shows no significant difference in the percentage of female reviewers with the number of reviewers for the article revision taking into consideration the small sample sizes and large confidence intervals where there are more than 4 reviewers.

Likewise, there are no set number of revisions for a submission. When we look at the female percentage of reviewers for each total number of revisions of submissions, as in Fig. 15c we can see some significant trends.

There is a progression to higher percentages of women reviewers for submissions that have been revised many times. This ceases to be significant for more than 5 revisions and the small sample size of submissions which have more than this number of reviews should be noted.

(D4) Female percentage of reviews by chemistry sub-discipline

We see greater differences between the female percentages of reviewers and those of corresponding authors than the differences in Section B6 between corresponding authors and first authors. Although Food has the highest female percentage of any chemistry sub-discipline, the female percentage of reviewers is 4.1% lower than that of corresponding authors. In contrast, Inorganic reviews have a female percentage of reviewers 3.1% higher than that of corresponding authors. In all, 11 of the categories have a female percentage of reviewers lower than the female percentage of corresponding authors. In particular, sub-disciplines with bigger negative differences between the female percentage of reviewers compared to corresponding authors are Environmental (4.3%), Food (4.1%), Physical (3.8%), Chemical Biology and Medicinal (3.7%).

(E) Gender characteristics of reviews

(e1) relationship between reviewer recommendations and corresponding author gender.

While the difference between the extreme outcomes of “accept” and “reject” is not so marked between male and female corresponding authors, the difference is more apparent for the grey areas in the middle – “major revision” and “minor revision”. It is apparent that the two more positive outcomes – “accept” and “minor revision” are less common for female corresponding authors, and the two more negative outcomes – “major revisions” and “reject” are more common for them.

(E2) Relationship between reviewer recommendations and gender

The strongest difference between male and female reviewers apparent in these plots is that females are less likely to reject papers than males. It is also apparent is that female reviewers are more likely to recommend major revisions than reject a paper whereas the reverse is true for male reviewers. Female reviewers are slightly (but significantly) more likely to accept papers outright than male reviewers.

(E3) Relationship between reviewer recommendations, corresponding author and reviewer gender

The lower plots in Fig. 19 are very similar to those shown in Section E2 since the majority of reviewers are male, so we would expect this to be the case.

The column with the biggest difference between the female reviewers on the top row and the male reviewers on the bottom row is that for the “reject” recommendations. The difference between female and male reviewers reflects the observation in the discussion for Section E2 that female reviewers are less likely to reject papers than male reviewers are. The additional interaction between the variables shows that while male reviewers are slightly more likely to reject papers from female corresponding authors, female reviewers do not follow this pattern.

The observation in the discussion for Section E2 that female corresponding authors are less likely to have submissions accepted by reviewers than male authors is not the case when the reviewers are female, and likewise for minor revisions. Indeed, there is no significant difference between the proportions for male or female corresponding authors in all of the plots on the top line for female reviewers – suggesting that the recommendations of female reviewers differ less with corresponding author gender than those of male reviewers.

(F) Gender characteristics of final manuscript outcome

(f1) relationship between final outcome of original submission and author gender.

The percentage of original submissions from female corresponding authors that are ultimately accepted, at 22.9%, is very slightly, but significantly ( p = 1.25 × 10 −14 ) below that of all submissions. Conversely, the percentage of original submissions from female corresponding authors that are ultimately rejected is very slightly, but significantly ( p = 3.21 × 10 −16 ) higher than that of all submissions (23.9%). The small sample sizes for undecided and submission for revision mean that any difference from the baseline is not significant ( p = 1.00 × 10 for both). When considering submissions from first authors rather than corresponding authors, there is no significant difference between any of these outcomes and the baseline.

These percentages of female authors who have accepted submissions are broadly in line with corresponding numbers for Chemistry articles in PubMed and arXiv of 20.4–21.0% for last authors and 34.8–35.4% for first authors. 14

(F2) Relationship between agreement between reviewer recommendations and final revision status, reviewer gender, corresponding author gender, editor gender

The effect of an additional variable of corresponding author gender were again modelled using a logistic GLM – the effects are shown in Fig. 20a .

There is no significant relationship between the “status and recommendation agree” variable and the corresponding author gender, and no significant interactions between corresponding author gender with this outcome.

In contrast, including the interactions of an additional variable of editor gender rather than corresponding author gender in the binomial GLM model shown in Fig. 20b is significant.

The p -value of the modelling of the relationship between the outcome variable of “status and recommendation agree” and the interaction of editor gender and reviewer gender shows that the relationship is significant. Female editors agree with female reviewers significantly more than male reviewers. For male editors there is no significant difference between the proportions of reviews when they agree with male reviewers compared to female reviewers.

(F3) Female percentage of accepted submissions by chemistry sub-discipline and impact factor

For all chemistry sub-disciplines, the female percentage of corresponding authors of accepted submissions is less than that of original submissions (indicating that more submissions from female corresponding authors are rejected between these stages). This is not the case for female first authors where for 6 of the 13 high level subjects, the female percentage of accepted submissions is higher than that of original submissions which indicates that first authors don't experience the same level of gender imbalance.

Catalysis is the sub-discipline with the greatest decrease in female percentage of corresponding authors of accepted submissions versus all original submissions with a difference of 1.1%, but Organic , and Food are slightly lower at 0.7% and Miscellaneous , and Analytical at 0.6%. All three are sub-disciplines that had a much smaller percentage of female reviewers than corresponding authors did in Section D4. In contrast, there is no difference between the female percentage of corresponding authors for submissions and acceptances for Chemical Biology and Medicinal and only a small difference of 0.2% for Biological , Nanoscience and Environmental , but it is worth noting that these are subjects with considerably fewer female reviewers than corresponding authors in Section D4.

Similarly, we can revisit our analysis in Section B6, in which we investigated how the gender of authors varied across impact factor within the different sub-disciplines. Now we can consider just the subset of these submissions that were accepted. The effects of the resulting GLM model is shown in Fig. 22 for corresponding authors and the analogous plots for first authors are shown in Fig. F3d of the ESI. †

We see the same trends of female authorship for published articles as for submitted articles – the review process does not disrupt this, and there is still a drop off in the percentage of female corresponding and first authors of journals with a higher impact factor for all chemistry sub-disciplines.

This is in line with previous studies which also found that a negative correlation between the Impact Factor of journals (standardised by discipline) by the proportion of women authors 14 and also in the field of neuroscience publications. 31 This has important implications for the careers of female researchers since impact factor of journals of publications is used as a proxy for their excellence and impact, and so the lower submission rates of female authors to higher impact journals that leads to it is a point for concern.

(F4) Female percentage of accepted submissions by final number of revisions

These observations for female corresponding authors do not apply to first authors – while there is a slight increase in the female first authorship of submissions with increasing number of revisions, this is not significant.

(G) Gender characteristics of citations

Here we focus on corresponding authors rather than first authors since the trends are the same for both but the differences larger for corresponding authors.

The baseline we use for comparison in this section is the female percentage of corresponding authors of cited articles shown above, 18.4%.

(G1) Overview of citations by gender

The percentage of RSC articles that are authored by female corresponding authors and cite other RSC articles is lower than the average of all RSC articles that are accepted for publication (as described in Section F1) by female corresponding authors, and likewise for first authors.

Fig. 25 breaks down all cited RSC articles by the number of citations from other RSC articles to it.

For articles with less than 10 citations, a progression to higher percentages of male authorship with increasing number of citations can be seen, and the bottom of the plot (which corresponds to highly cited articles) shows higher male authorship. For articles with citations greater than 10 there is no clear trend and small sample sizes are common particularly for the articles with large numbers of citations.

(G2) Citation success of published article by whether they were unanimously accepted and corresponding author gender

The lower citation success rate of articles which were not unanimously accepted (left-hand plot) compared to those that were (right-hand plot) is evident from the ANOVA p -value. For both, the proportion of articles published by female corresponding authors have lower citation success proportions than those by male corresponding authors, and this difference is also significant. However, while both variables are significant, the interaction between them is not significant, which indicates that female corresponding authors are cited less than their male counterparts in both sets of articles.

(G3) Female percentage of citations by date

There is a slight increase of the percentage of articles which cite articles from female corresponding authors over the time period since 2012 (discounting years where the sample size was too small to tell). However, for no year is the female percentage significantly different from the baseline of the average for citations.

(G4) Self-citations by gender

(g5) relationship between cited corresponding author gender and citing corresponding author gender, (g6) female percentage of citations by chemistry sub-discipline and impact factor.

The distribution by chemistry sub-discipline is in general consistent with trends shown previously – sub-disciplines with higher female percentages of corresponding authors of published articles are those with higher percentages of citations of those. Categories in which female under-citing might be occurring (with the biggest differences in percentages for cited and published corresponding authors) are Miscellaneous (22.9% difference), Food (20.6% difference), Biological (19.1% difference), Chemical Biology and Medicinal (18.5% difference), Environmental (17.2% difference).

In Fig. 30 we show a binomial model of female proportion of citations with impact factor broken down by category.

For the majority of Chemistry sub-disciplines, there is a decrease in the percentage of citations to articles with female corresponding authors with increasing impact factor. The exceptions are Energy, which shows the opposite trend, and Environmental and Nanoscience show no marked increase or decrease with female corresponding author citation percentage with impact factor.

(H) Gender characteristics of H-index

We have taken this list, and expanded the first initial to a name (using Wikipedia and Google Scholarly API lookups or manual lookups if neither of these returned anything) and run these first names through our gender mapping script to assign gender of each. Because of the small sample size, and small number of females that emerged, thorough manual checking and adjustment was performed on the genders that were obtained. The total numbers for each H-index band are shown in Fig. 31 .

Only 19 female authors appear in the list of 547 chemistry researchers – a percentage of 3.5%, which is significantly different from the baseline female percentage of chemistry researchers overall 35.8%.

We should, however, note that H-index has been criticised as an unfair measure of publication success. H-Index values vary greatly with chemistry sub-discipline, favouring sub-disciplines that are more prolific in terms of publications and citations at the expense of those that produce fewer publications. Also, by its nature, H-index ranking favours those researchers who are further on in their career and in years. To investigate this we have also obtained the years of birth of these chemists where available from Wikipedia and internet searching and found that the mean age of female chemists when the original analysis was conducted in 2011 was 66.1 (standard error = 4.06, n = 16) and for male chemists was 69.3 (standard error = 0.53, n = 403), the difference between which is not significant (two sample t -test, p = 0.44). However, the main salient point from considering the ages of these chemists is that, as might be expected, they correspond to an age and career stage where females are underrepresented (due to the “leaky pipeline”) even before the number of publications and citations are considered. Reflection of the gender balance of a previous generation of chemists may also be exacerbated by these H-index values and their rankings being from 2011 rather than more current.

However, even given all of these factors, we have highlighted that using the H-index in its simplest form as a measure of publication and career success results in dramatic underrepresentation of female researchers. Using a modified form (for example weighting by length of career) might address this to some extent.

Conclusions

We are releasing code, tools and data with this paper for others to use in their analysis. The work described in this paper is only the start in terms of studying gender bias in the chemical sciences. We are planning to extend this work to ascertain reasons for the imbalances we see. We plan to explore further the imbalances we observed by investigating: improving the gender assignment methods to get a more inclusive picture of the differences; patterns of behaviour ( e.g. cliques); and differences in review styles ( e.g. sentiment).

The female percentages quoted are percentages relative to those with known gender (omitting those whose gender could not be deduced). This means that the analysis considers 53% of corresponding authors, 48% of first authors, 57% of reviewers, but 74% of editors, and as discussed in Section B3, it was apparent that those not included are predominantly of Asian origin, even when an alternative gender-assignment method and name-gender mapping data set were used. For parts of this analysis which focus on characteristics of authors, reviewers and editors this is an unfortunate but somewhat unavoidable limitation in the scope of this study that we should highlight. When considering potential conscious and unconscious biases towards authors and reviewers when it comes to rejection without peer review, reviewer decision, editor decision and citations, these biases will be stronger towards or against those researchers whose names are more readily associated with a particular gender. This paper therefore focuses on the effects of more inter-Westernised gender biases, rather than those that might exist in non-Westernised cultures or between Westernised and non-Westernised cultures, the latter of which would additionally be complicated by geographical biases.

In Section A we looked at 3 different data sets to establish a baseline of 35.8% of chemistry researchers that are female. As demonstrated in Fig. 32 , at each step of publication we see small but significant drops in the female percentage of authors that gradually decrease from this baseline. Rather than one dominant factor, it is more akin to “death by a thousand cuts”. This female drop off through the publication process is most marked for female corresponding authors, but is also apparent to a lesser degree for female first authors. The cumulative pattern by the end of the publication process investigated here is seen in Fig. 32 . The same trends were also apparent when considering the complementary technique of success rates as a function of gender through these various publication stages. The female corresponding author success rates were consistently significantly less than the male corresponding author success rates: for submissions progressing through to peer review (69.31% female, 71.98% male); submissions being accepted for publication (47.38% female, 50.1% male); and publications being cited at least once by another RSC article (5.25% female, 6.79%). A similar trend was apparent for first authors' success rates to a lesser extent. Each step of Fig. 32 was broken down and investigated in more detail through the sections of this article.

In Section B, we saw that female authors submit fewer articles (Section B2), are less likely to author a paper on their own (Section B4) and are more likely to submit to journals with a lower impact factor within a particular chemistry sub-discipline (Section B6) than their male counterparts. Female first authors are more likely to co-author with female corresponding authors than male corresponding authors and the converse is true (Section B4).

Articles authored by female corresponding and first authors are more likely to be rejected without review than those from male corresponding authors (Section C2). While there is a higher percentage of female editors than the baseline for Chemistry researchers (Section C1) (due largely to the gender balance of in-house RSC staff), female reviewers are under-represented, reflecting the female percentage of invitations rather than a tendency to accept those invitations less or decline them more (Section D1). Female reviewers are more likely to review papers that have been under revision many times e.g. revisions 3, 4, and 5 (Section D3). Female reviewers are more likely to review submissions from female corresponding authors (D2) and when they do, they are more likely to accept or recommend minor revisions for these female corresponding authors than their male counterparts (Section E3). However, though, in general, reviewers are more likely to recommend rejection or major revisions rather than acceptance or minor revisions for submissions from female corresponding authors than male ones (Section E1). Female reviewers are more likely to recommend major revisions rather than rejection for submissions that they review (Section E2).

These reviewer recommendations add up to slightly (but significantly) fewer submissions from corresponding authors being accepted for publication than those of their male counterparts (Section F1) although this is not significant for female first authors compared to male first authors (Section F1). Editors are slightly but significantly more likely to choose a final status of a revision which agrees with female reviewers than male reviewers (Section F2) and this difference increases more in cases where the editor is female (Section F2). There is a slightly but significantly higher female percentage of corresponding authors of submissions with increasing number of revisions (Section F4). The mean time from submission to final decision for accepted submissions from female corresponding authors is significantly greater than that from male corresponding authors (Section F4). The proportion of female corresponding and first authors of accepted articles for higher impact journals within a sub-discipline are lower than that for lower impact journals (Section F6), following the similar trend for submissions by impact factor and gender (Section B6), and with important implications to potentially limit the impact of the research and careers of these female authors.

Published articles from female corresponding and first authors (to a lesser extent) receive fewer citations than those from their male counterparts (Section G1). Female corresponding authors cite less articles than male corresponding authors (Section G1). Publications with female corresponding authors are less likely to be highly cited than those of their male counterparts (Section G1). Articles that were unanimously accepted by reviewers were proportionally cited less for female corresponding authors than those by male corresponding authors (G2). Male authors self-cite more than their female counterparts (Section G4). Female corresponding authors are more likely to cite other female corresponding authors and the converse is true (Section G5). There is a decrease of the percentage of female corresponding authors of citations with impact factor for the majority (but not all) of Chemistry sub-disciplines (G6).

In summary, we do not see one dominant factor disadvantaging female researchers in the publishing process, but a series of small but significant results. We did, however, observe some evidence of gender homophily (between authors, and their reviewers and editors) – with female researchers working together to counteract these imbalances.

There are some differences within Chemistry sub-disciplines, but those which are strongest in female corresponding and first authorship of submissions and publications – Food , Environmental , Biological and Chemical Biology and Medicinal – (Sections B6 and F3) are also those which are most under-represented by female reviewers (Section D4) and under-cited for female corresponding authors (Section G6). The sub-disciplines with lower female authorship are Organic , Catalysis , Inorganic and Energy (Section B6 and F3), but Inorganic is the only sub-discipline which has a higher percentage of reviewers than that of submitting corresponding authors (Section D4).

There is no significant change in the female proportion of corresponding or first authors of submissions (Section B5) or reviewers (Section D3) over the 3 year period investigated, or the number of citations to publications by female corresponding authors over time from 2012 till 2018 (Section G3).

In Section H, a marked under-representation of female researchers was evident in the living chemists with the highest H-index scores.

We have provided evidence that there are compounding disparities between male chemists and their female counterparts through the publication process and have characterised these as far as possible. Several differences identified in this paper (lower likelihood of publications being accepted, increased number of revisions and therefore time until publication) could be interpreted as being due to lower productivity at fixed evaluation points (such as recruitment, grant proposal review or promotion). An underlying question is whether this gender difference is due to (1) gender bias, (2) a difference in the research quality according to author gender or (3) other systematic differences in the submission features of male and female co-authors that might affect publication success e.g. impact of journal or number of authors. Cause 2 (whether submission quality varies with gender) is somewhat debateable and controversial, but research quality could be affected by factors such as lower research grant funding being awarded to female principal investigators 35 or female authors holding themselves to higher standards, 36 or indeed the “leaky pipeline” itself acting as a circular cause and effect of the publication disparities. We have provided breakdowns by publication features to address cause 3, but it is hard to disentangle causes 1 and 2 when quality of submissions is judged by the peer review that is under investigation. We have had little success in identifying a control to act as a proxy for quality that could be used to uncouple causes 1 and 2 and are reluctant to judge the quality of a submission by a proxy external to the article itself. As such the consistently lower female proportions of successful submissions in all groups that we observed should be considered in this wider context.

In an accompanying report 37 we follow these observations up by highlighting specific points for action by the Royal Society of Chemistry and its community.

Availability of materials and R code

Conflicts of interest, acknowledgements, notes and references.

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We are delighted to present the inaugural Frontiers in Chemistry 'Women in Science: Chemistry' article collection. At present, less than 30% of researchers worldwide are women. Long-standing biases and gender stereotypes are discouraging girls and women away from science related fields, and ...

Keywords : Chemistry, Women, STEM, Diversity, UNESCO, International Day of Women and Girls in Science

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May 1, 2013

Women Are Earning Greater Share of STEM Degrees, but Doctorates Remain Gender-Skewed

Women are more likely than men to withdraw from science

By John Matson

In 2008, for the first time, U.S. women earned more doctorates in biology than men did. But advanced degrees in other core disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) remain stubbornly gender-imbalanced. In chemistry, for instance, women now garner 49 percent of bachelor's degrees but only 39 percent of Ph.D.s. What dissuades so many from further study?

Possible explanations include gender bias, the prospect of short-term postdoctoral jobs that complicate child rearing, and a lack of role models. Female STEM professors are slowly increasing in number, however. “It seems like many of the indicators are pointing toward parity, but at different scales and different rates,” says science education professor Adam V. Maltese of Indiana University Bloomington, adding that fields such as engineering have a long way to go. “That's not going to happen overnight, not in the next decade, and maybe not for the next 20 or 25 years.”

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Field of degree: Women

Of all science and engineering (S&E) degrees awarded in 2018, women earned about half of bachelor’s degrees, 44.7% of master’s degrees, and 41.2% of doctoral degrees. The shares of women earning S&E bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees both decreased slightly from 2008. However, the share of women earning S&E doctoral degrees increased slightly during this period. Although the share of women earning S&E degrees has been fairly stable over the past 10 years, the proportion of degrees awarded to women in S&E fields varies across and within broad fields of study. Women’s highest degree shares across all three degree levels (bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate) were in psychology and biological sciences. Agricultural sciences had high shares of women earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Computer sciences and engineering had the lowest degree shares of women. ​ In this theme, totals include students with a temporary visa.

Women held a majority of the degrees in several S&E fields in 2018. They held a majority of the degrees in psychology, biological sciences, and agricultural sciences at all degree levels—bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. In psychology, women received at least 70% of degrees at each level. In biological sciences, women received over 60% of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and over half of doctoral degrees. In agricultural sciences, women earned over half of bachelor’s and master’s degrees and 47.5% of doctorates. These were the highest rates among the S&E fields. Despite these high rates, there are S&E fields with low female representation, and they are the focus of this theme.

Social sciences

In the field of social sciences, women earned a majority of bachelor’s degrees (55.2%) and master’s degrees (57.0%), and they earned slightly more than half of doctorates. The number of female graduates in social sciences and their share in this field increased over time at all three degree levels ( figure 8 ).

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Degrees awarded to women: Social sciences, 1998, 2008, 2018

Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, Completions Survey, unrevised provisional release data, accessed 14 January 2020. Related detailed data: WMPD table 5-2 , table 6-1 , and table 7-1 .

Although women earned near or over half of all degrees in social sciences in 2018, their share of economics degrees at all degree levels continues to be the lowest within the social sciences, with little change in the share at the bachelor’s degree level over the past 2 decades. The lack of movement at the bachelor’s level may constrain future increases at the master’s and doctoral levels. In addition, despite a small increase in the number of women receiving doctoral degrees in economics, women’s share of these degrees has declined over the past 10 years ( figure 9 ).

Degrees awarded to women: Economics, 1998, 2008, 2018

Computer sciences.

Computer sciences has one of the lowest shares of female degree recipients among the broad fields of S&E, despite an increase in the number of women receiving computer sciences degrees over the past 2 decades—the number of women with bachelor’s and doctoral degrees more than doubled, and the number with master’s degrees more than quadrupled. Although the share of women receiving master’s and doctoral degrees increased, the share receiving bachelor’s degrees declined, from 27.0% in 1998 to 19.9% in 2018. The academic pipeline for women earning advanced degrees in computer sciences may be affected, to the extent that graduate enrollment will be affected by a smaller proportion of women receiving a bachelor’s in computer sciences ( figure 10 ).

Degrees awarded to women: Computer sciences, 1998, 2008, 2018

Engineering.

Engineering is another S&E field with one of the lowest shares of female degree recipients. However, both the number and share of women receiving engineering degrees increased at all levels over the past 2 decades. The number of women receiving engineering doctoral degrees is small, about 2,700 in 2018, yet the share of degrees earned by women in this field doubled, from 12.3% to 24.5% since 1998 ( figure 11 ).

Degrees awarded to women: Engineering, 1998, 2008, 2018

Mathematics and statistics.

Women earned less than half of mathematics and statistics degrees: their share was over 40% at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels but under 30% at the doctoral level. Over the past 2 decades, the share of women receiving bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and statistics declined and the share of women receiving master’s degrees was stagnant. At the doctoral level, women’s share increased between 1998 and 2008, from 25.7% to 31.1%. The share then declined to 28.0% in 2018, even though there was an increase in the number of women receiving doctoral degrees ( figure 12 ).

Degrees awarded to women: Mathematics and statistics, 1998, 2008, 2018

Earth and physical sciences.

Women earned fewer than half of the degrees in the broad fields of physical and earth sciences. In 2018, women’s shares of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees were 40.6%, 35.6%, and 32.5%, respectively, in physical sciences and 38.4%, 42.6%, and 44.1% in earth sciences. At the bachelor’s level, the share of female degree holders decreased slightly between 2008 and 2018, whereas the master’s share held fairly steady. During the same period, the share of doctoral degrees awarded to women increased, from 30.2% in 2008 to 34.3% in 2018. Among the earth and physical sciences, chemistry had the highest shares of degrees awarded to women: 50.8% at the bachelor’s level, 45.4% at the master’s level, and 39.0% at the doctoral level in 2018. Astronomy’s share of women receiving doctoral degrees in 2018 (38.9%) was just behind chemistry’s share. However, the number of female doctorate recipients in astronomy was small (82 women).

Physics has the lowest share of female degree recipients within the broad field of physical sciences. Although both the number and share of physics degrees awarded to women increased over the past 2 decades for all three degree levels, the number and share of women in this field remained very small ( figure 13 ).

Degrees awarded to women: Physics, 1998, 2008, 2018

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• v.2(4); 2016 Apr 27

Achieving Gender Balance in the Chemistry Professoriate Is Not Rocket Science

C hemistry World warns us that the pipeline of US female chemists is in doubt , reporting on a diversity symposium held at last month’s ACS National meeting in San Diego. Apparently, major research universities are not hiring women at a pace that would achieve a critical mass (e.g., 30%) in my lifetime, and at some top-flight universities the numbers remain so low that you can count them on one hand. This has not changed much over the last few decades, raising alarm bells and begging the question, why is it so hard to populate the ranks of chemistry department faculty with women?

It is a subject that many groups and individuals both wiser and more informed than I have written about. Some put blame on an underrepresentation of women in chemistry graduate programs— their numbers hover around 27%. But even compared to this pool, women’s representation in academia remains stubbornly low, especially in the upper ranks where many departments still boast numbers of tenured female faculty between zero and two. Looking at this situation from the outside, you can understand why a graduate student might suspect that she will run up against an extraordinary effort to exclude women from the chemistry academy. I mean seriously, in an age when we fly by Pluto and send President Jimmy Carter’s metastatic melanoma into remission, how is it that we cannot figure out how to hire and promote female professors of chemistry?

When I posed this question to the Twittersphere, some interesting statistics came to light. One follower reported that his chemistry department held a faculty search this year, and of the 91 applicants, 12 were women—that’s a mere 13%. Other anecdotes suggest this is a common outcome in chemistry faculty searches. Such figures are consistent with a report by Jessica Lober Newsome for the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology and the Royal Society of Chemistry: “The chemistry PhD: the impact on women’s retention”. She notes that men and women in UK PhD programs start their graduate work enthusiastic about the prospect of a career in the chemistry professoriate, but “by the third year, the proportion of men planning careers in research had dropped from 61% to 59%...for the women, the number had plummeted from 72% in the first year to 37% as they finish their studies.” And these numbers include research careers in both academia and industry. The proportion of female advanced PhD students who saw academia as their preferred choice? Just 12%. This paltry figure prompted Curt Rice reporting in The Guardian to ask the question, “Why are universities such unattractive workplaces?”

This is a question best answered by the women who considered academic careers and then, ultimately, chose other paths. Lober Newsome’s interviews revealed the recurring theme of “supervision issues, which they felt powerless to resolve”. What that essentially boiled down to was difficulty dealing with advisors with poor management skills, interactions with whom eroded their students’ self-confidence and morale. Whereas male students saw this as a transient rite of passage, women were simply demoralized and saw life outside academia as a reprieve from such oppression. Other common themes were feelings of isolation and exclusion and concerns about a culture of extreme work patterns and intragroup competition. And women are bombarded with negative messaging about the challenges they will face and the sacrifices they will make should they pursue the academic path: the price you will pay for work-life balance , the “mom penalty” and the ironic disadvantage that befalls those who capitalize on family friendly tenure policies. With such expectations, I am not sure I would have wanted this job either!

So indulge me as I counter this ominous messaging with an alternative perspective. Graduate school is where you learn about yourself as a scientist—your strengths and weaknesses, how you think about problems, how to interact with and motivate your colleagues, and how you can make impact in this world. You might also learn that certain styles of management lie in opposition to your needs. Those are data points that will inform how you interact with your own junior colleagues as you mature into leadership roles yourself. Many women pursue PhDs in the first place because, like me, they crave autonomy—autonomy of thought, of expression, of schedule. It is hard to achieve in most professions, especially for women, but priceless and worth the pursuit. That very autonomy makes it easier, I would argue, to integrate work and family within academic settings compared to many other environments.

With autonomy comes responsibility, of course, and many people will count on you to keep the ship afloat and headed in the right direction. Occasionally women articulate to me that such responsibility looms large in their mind, that their aversion to academia is rooted in a fear of judgment and failure. In response, I share with them what my dad said to me when I once admitted these feelings. First, he reminded me of the first time he handed me the keys to the car, and I peeled out of the driveway without concern for the depth of my qualification. Then the conversation went like this:

Dad: “You got your own lab? Go for it. What do you have to lose?”

Me: “What if I can’t get grants funded?”

Dad: “So what, as long as you still get paid. Try again.”

Me: “What if I don’t get tenure?”

Dad: “So what, it is still a good starter job that builds skills for many other (higher paying) jobs.”

He was right about that. My friends who didn’t get that coveted promotion jumped into high-level industrial positions they could never have acquired had they started their career in that same company. You see, after six years running a lab in academia, they had project and budget management experience. They had done HR, PR, and built a valuable network of colleagues and collaborators. No age-matched bench chemist in industry could develop that portfolio of skills at the same pace.

The young professor whose starter job in academia does turn into a life-long pursuit can continually morph her job to suit her evolving interests—that is why no two professors are alike in their “typical” day. Have an idea for a book? You can find a way to write it and someone to publish it. Want to consult for industry, government, law firms? Go ahead. Want to develop a new course, graduate program, institute or center of excellence? Collect a few faculty friends and you can have fun building and brainstorming together. Still scarred from past mistreatment in graduate school? Pay it forward with your own students and, in doing so, shift the culture toward a new light.

On that note, here are a few bits of advice for PIs who want to be part of the solution. Acknowledge that the goal of academia is to generate knowledge and innovations, and to produce the next generation of human capital to wield them. For the advancement of their careers, your students need one truly inspired idea brought to life with high-quality research and scholarship. How they might best achieve that goal is as individual and idiosyncratic as the ideas themselves. Granting your students and postdocs freedom to manage their own time and find their own muse is a sure way to promote creativity, and it may boost productivity as well. Remember that one really great experiment, which took time to research, plan and vet with colleagues, is more valuable than a dozen ill-conceived or boring experiments. We should not confuse graduate training with widget-making, where, unlike the research lab, hours clocked may indeed correlate linearly with production.

The respect and trust that are inherent in granting students control of their daily lives pays dividends in their effort and loyalty. Consider Netflix (you know, the outrageously successful company with the happy employees and the $45B market cap). Employees at Netflix are no longer required to account for vacation days. They are entitled to up to one year of paid parental leave if they need it. As a consequence, the best people want to work there, and the company gets to select the very best of the best. To be sure, long hours are sometimes necessary in any job; that is not unique to the professoriate. But it is certainly nothing to brag about. Neglecting health or family is not honorable, and we shouldn’t criticize students, postdocs or faculty when they make principled choices.

I think we can, in my lifetime, increase the proportion of women on chemistry faculties. We can start by promoting a forward-looking view of those benefits the professoriate might offer, and then, we make it so. And, if adherents to the status quo protest, as my dad would say, “so what.”

Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.

Chemistry, PhD

Zanvyl krieger school of arts and sciences.

Johns Hopkins University was the first American institution to emphasize graduate education and to establish a PhD program in chemistry. Founding Chair Ira Remsen initiated a tradition of excellence in research and education that has continued until this day. The Hopkins graduate program is designed for students who desire a PhD in chemistry while advancing scientific knowledge for humankind.

The graduate program provides students with the background and technical expertise required to be leaders in their field and to pursue independent research.

Graduate students’ advancement is marked by entrance exams, coursework, teaching, seminars, oral examinations, and an individual research project that culminates in a thesis dissertation. The thesis research project represents an opportunity for graduate students to make a mark on the world. Working in conjunction with a faculty member or team, individually tailored thesis projects enable students to think independently about cutting-edge research areas that are of critical importance. Thesis research is the most important step toward becoming a PhD scientist, and our program provides an outstanding base with a proven track record of success.

Graduate students make up the heart of the Chemistry Department, and the department strives to support students’ individual needs. Each student is carefully advised and classes are traditionally quite small. Multidisciplinary research and course offerings that increase scientific breadth and innovation are hallmarks of the program.  In addition to academic and technical development, our department also offers several outlets for professional and social development.

Admission Requirements

Application materials include:

• Academic transcripts
• Three letters of recommendation
• Statement of Purpose
• The GRE General Test is required.  However, this requirement can be waived for individuals for whom personal circumstances make it difficult or impossible to access the GRE General Test at this present time.  If so, please let the Academic Affairs Administrator (information below) be aware of these circumstances, and the application will be given full consideration.
• The GRE Chemistry Subject is Test is recommended, but not required.
• The application fee is $75. However, fee waivers may be requested for applicants that have documentation showing they are a part of SACNAS, MARCC, oSTEM and many other organizations. To access the full list to see if you qualify, go to the  Krieger Graduate Admission and Enrollment  page.

Assistance with the application process is available. Candidates with questions about the application process, or requests for a GRE General Test waiver (or on other matters related to the application) should contact the Admissions Committee’s Academic Affairs Administrator ( [email protected] ).

There are no fixed requirements for admission. Undergraduate majors in chemistry, biology, earth sciences, mathematics, or physics may apply as well as all well-qualified individuals who will have received a BA degree before matriculation. A select number of applicants will be invited to visit campus to tour our facilities and interact with our faculty members and their lab members over a weekend in March.

For further information about graduate study in chemistry visit the Chemistry Department website . 

Program Requirements

Normally, the minimum course requirement for both the M.A. and the Ph.D. degrees is six one-semester graduate courses in chemistry and related sciences. Exceptionally well-prepared students may ask for a reduction of these requirements.

Requirements for the Ph.D. degree include a research dissertation worthy of publication, and a knowledge of chemistry and related material as demonstrated in an oral examination. Each student must teach for at least one year.

Below is a list of the core Chemistry courses for graduate level students.

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Chemistry Department Ranked Most Gender Diverse

According to the latest survey conducted by the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity (OXIDE), the percentage of female faculty in STEM fields, specifically chemistry, is slowly increasing. According to a poll of the top 50 chemistry departments in the United States, in the 2016–17 academic year, an average of 20% of the roughly 1,500 chemistry faculty were women.

In 2016–17, Northeastern University had the highest percentage of total chemistry faculty who were women, at 32%, or 7 of 22. Northeastern’s chemistry department is proud to be recognized as one of the most gender diverse in the nation, leading the initiative to expand the STEM industry to include more women.

Source: Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity (OXIDE) survey 2016–17.Note: Figures are for tenured and tenure-track women chemistry faculty at 46 of the 50 schools identified as having spent the most on chemistry research in fiscal 2014 by the National Science Foundation. When a school has multiple campuses, faculty numbers are for the campus listed. Declined to participate: Univ. of Akron; Univ. of California, San Francisco; Univ. of Colorado, Boulder; Stanford Univ.

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering: Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief (2021)

Chapter: diversity, equity, and inclusion in chemistry and chemical engineering: proceedings of a workshop - in brief.

Proceedings of a Workshop

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

Proceedings of a workshop—in brief.

A diverse workforce and inclusive workspaces are important components of future chemical and chemical engineering research. The workshop Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, held virtually on May 25–26, 2021, by the Chemical Sciences Roundtable (CSR), provided a venue for the chemical sciences community to discuss ideas and best practices for creating more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments. Specifically, the workshop (1) explored barriers to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that are specific to chemistry and chemical engineering, (2) examined successful programs and best practices for increasing DEI in these fields, and (3) explored innovative approaches to create a culture in which all have equal opportunities to participate and advance. Ultimately, the workshop provided a forum for academic, government, and industrial participants to increase awareness of potential barriers to DEI and gain information needed to create more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments in their workplaces. This document summarizes the presentations and discussions that took place during the workshop, but it should not be viewed as consensus conclusions or recommendations of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The workshop videos and presentations are available online. 1

KEYNOTE: EXPANDING PARTICIPATION OF UNDERREPRESENTED MINORITIES IN THE CHEMICAL SCIENCES: MOVING THE NEEDLE

Freeman Hrabowski, President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and Co-Founder of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, opened the workshop with a keynote speech sharing his perspective on how to increase the number of underrepresented minority (URM) students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Hrabowski focused largely on the undergraduate experience, citing a report that found that many minority students do not succeed in natural science and engineering programs ( NAS et al., 2011 ). He stated that factors such as the level of attraction to these (or other) disciplines and the amount of rigorous preparation of students prior to college were not found to play a significant role in the lack of minority student representation. Instead, Hrabowski noted that the problem is likely rooted in the experiences of students during their first 2 years in undergraduate scientific programs.

Hrabowski emphasized that, although the focus should be on moving the needle toward increasing diversity, “it is important to recognize any progress that’s being made—and there is progress being made.” This progress not only gives hope to the community, he said, but also more importantly can provide examples for other institutions looking to increase their diversity and to support inclusive environments. Replicating successful initiatives is just one of many suggestions that Hrabowski had for making progress. He also advised that universities set high expectations for themselves and be honest about what is and what is not working through consistent evaluation. Hrabowski stated that coordinated work among national agencies could help improve understanding of the efforts that are making a difference.

__________________

1 See https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/05-25-2021/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-chemistry-and-chemical-engineeringa-workshop-of-the-chemical-sciences-roundtable .

Multiple participants asked for Hrabowski’s thoughts on the high cost of implementing institutional programs to support DEI. He acknowledged the reality that increased funds could likely contribute to improved and expanded initiatives. However, he urged the audience to focus on starting small, emphasizing the importance of making progress.

SESSION I: ESTABLISHED PROGRAMS

Session I began with a presentation from Dontarie Stallings, Associate Director of the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity (OXIDE), in which he shared his thoughts on cultivating change in the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering. Stallings also shared demographic data from those fields to provide a quantitative foundation for the subsequent discussions. He started his talk by reimagining the analogy of the leaky pipeline that is often used to describe the loss of diverse talent in a field. Instead of using a pipeline, which “focuses on the failure of individuals,” he presented the idea of a ladder where every rung represents a level in one’s career, and each transition between the rungs represents the opportunity for a student or professional to opt-out of matriculating on to the next rung. Stallings argued that placing focus on getting students and professionals to opt-in and to make the choice to stay in the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering is critical.

Stallings then moved into a discussion of demographic data. For women, Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans in academia, there is a drop in representation at every transition point between obtaining a BS degree through to becoming a full professor ( Wu et al., 2014 ). Looking specifically at chemistry and chemical engineering, Stallings then shared data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics ( NCSES, 2021 ). Stallings explained that the data show that, although underrepresented people of color (URPOC) are enrolled in college in rates demographically proportional to the U.S. population as a whole, this is not the case for chemistry nor chemical engineering enrollments. While 34 percent of the U.S. population is comprised of URPOC, only 25.3 percent and 18.7 percent of individuals attaining degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering, respectively, are URPOC, he stated. Stallings also examined the drop in URPOC representation between those attaining a BS degree and a PhD in chemistry—25 percent to 12.9 percent, respectively. Stallings concluded by arguing that systemic change has to occur in order for URPOC to opt-in at every level.

Part I: Building a Climate Conducive to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Part I of session I served to examine established programs that work to increase DEI by enhancing institutional climates. Rebecca Ruck, Executive Director of Process Research and Development and Enabling Technologies Lead at Merck, began by articulating her motivation for helping to lead the charge to increase DEI at Merck. In addition to being driven by her experiences as a woman in chemistry, she said that the vision of the Enabling Technologies group empowers her to tap into the power of diversity (including diverse technical skill sets) to increase innovation within the company. Ruck then shared the timeline of progress at Merck for improving diversity and inclusion (D&I) over the past 6 years. What started as a grassroots effort, she stated, quickly evolved into actionable efforts and feedback loops leading to continuous improvement. Ruck described a few of these actions, which included organizing D&I forums, reverse mentoring, building a dedicated D&I team, and leveraging internal town halls to showcase TED-style talks given by team members that highlighted their personal experiences with D&I. She also shared her team’s vision for the future, which included increasing diverse representation at all levels in the organization, providing unconscious bias training, and improving resources for flexible work arrangements.

Miguel Garcia-Garibay, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), shared his thoughts on how to improve the climates within universities and departments. Garcia-Garibay first stated that diversity increases the possibility of producing impactful science because the differences between people “broaden both the range of questions and the means to obtain their answers” in science. Everyone is unique and contributes to diversity, he argued, but inclusion, equity, dignity, and justice are aspects that also need to be considered. Garcia-Garibay noted that universities have legal obligations to ensure that various types of discrimination are prohibited on campuses and civil rights are upheld, but he argued that these laws and policies lead to schools being reactive in prescriptive ways. He continued by stating the way to be proactive is to work on changing the climate within these spaces (see Figure 1 ). Changes in leadership style, consistent commitment and messaging, building trust through accountability and transparency, and promoting human connections are some of the ways in which climates can be changed, according to Garcia-Garibay. He then shared his experience building a student-led group on UCLA’s campus, the Organization for Cultural Diversity in Science (OCDS), which focuses on bettering the climate for graduate students. He explained that OCDS not only strives to make the graduate experience better for all students but also offers opportunities for individuals to reach their career goals. Garcia-Garibay ended by saying that groups like OCDS, with a focus on climate-building help to reduce conflict, have the potential to save an institution money, can lead to faculty and staff retention, and can ensure a more just working environment for everyone.

Travis York, Director of Inclusive STEM Ecosystems for Equity and Diversity (ISEED) at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), presented information on the STEMM Equity Achievement (SEA) Change pro-

gram that is housed within AAAS. York emphasized that building a more inclusive and diverse STEM faculty is critical for institutions to serve their students. While there may be a tendency to think of low representation of diverse faculty as a pipeline problem, a hiring problem, or a “revolving door” problem, York believes that the issue should be addressed holistically. He stressed that hard funded institutional commitments are needed for structural reform. Furthermore, York stated that it is important for “institutions to not just think about strategies and single implementations … but to really think about organizational and structural change.” SEA Change, founded in 2018, helps institutions understand the specific problems that they are facing and build evidence-based action plans to enact and sustain change, all based on the four frames model (see Figure 2 ). The program requires institutions to collect and provide data through regular reporting, which is then reviewed externally by other professionals in the field. York finished his talk by sharing that SEA Change is in the process of piloting new processes and expanding its reach to work within academic health centers and medical schools as well as with STEM professional societies to develop departmental awards.

Following the completion of the three talks, a question and answer session between the virtual audience and the three speakers took place. Addressing a question about ensuring that there is a space for people to have difficult conversations around DEI, York stated that, in order to prevent DEI from becoming a partisan issue, it should be approached as a journey and space that could be created to allow for mistakes to be made. A participant followed up by asking York how to show colleagues the value of investing in DEI. York proposed using distinct messaging for different groups, for example, white students and faculty may respond to economic arguments, Black and Latino individuals may respond to the argument that it is ethical to increase DEI, and STEM researchers in general could respond to the

argument that diversity produces better science. Another participant asked how institutional accountability can actually lead to a change in culture. Ruck responded that a positive and inclusive climate is endemic to the success that her organization strives to achieve. Garcia-Garibay added that accountability is critical and there are several important metrics to track change, including both demographics data and data on the retention of all students in science.

Part II: Enhancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Talent Pool

Part II of session I served to examine established programs to increase DEI by focusing on the talent pool at those institutions. Lourdes Echegoyen, Director of the Campus Office of Undergraduate Research Initiatives and Research Associate Professor of chemistry at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), began Part II by sharing information about UTEP’s strategic goals and the BUILDing Scholars program (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity, a core component of a diversity program consortium at the National Institutes of Health). Echegoyen explained that UTEP is a commuter school that serves the community; 83 percent of the students enrolled are Hispanic and 50 percent are first-generation college attendees. She stated that a 10-year strategic plan with four main goals was developed in April 2020 to serve the student population. Echegoyen listed these goals as follows: (1) positively impact American higher education as an exemplary Hispanic-serving research university; (2) foster well-being in the community to promote healthier, more prosperous, and culturally enriched lives; (3) advance research, scholarship, and artistic expression with an emphasis on areas of current and emerging strength; and (4) provide students an excellent and engaged education at an inclusive university that builds on student strengths and demonstrates a culture of care. Echegoyen added that the BUILDing Scholars program at UTEP began as a way to get students, who would otherwise need to spend their time working off campus, more involved with their departments through paid research. Echegoyen ended her talk by sharing that retention rates have been higher for BUILD students, and on average those students are graduating with more competitive grade point averages and entering advanced degree programs at higher rates.

Ellen Wang Althaus, Director of the Sloan University Center of Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, spoke about the impact of the UCEM program. Althaus started by sharing that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign became one of eight UCEMs in the country supported by the Sloan Foundation in 2015, which is an initiative to diversify the U.S. PhD-holding workforce by increasing the recruitment, retention, and graduation rates of underrepresented doctoral students in STEM. The UCEM at Illinois established a goal to recruit 50 doctoral scholars in the first 3 years. She said that this effort required commitment from the upper administration as well as endorsement and financial support from the 19 university departments that now participate. Althaus explained that when selecting scholars for the UCEM, qualities such as potential, persistence, and passion for scientific research are considered in addition to sustained personal engagement with underrepresented communities. The UCEM at Illinois works to provide students with the assets to succeed, she said, some of which include scholarship supplements, mentoring, networking, professional development, and a supportive community. Althaus concluded by sharing that, of the 100 scholars that they have supported, there has been an 83 percent retention rate and a 100 percent rate of job placement among graduates. She further stated that just prior to the launch of the UCEM, the percentage of minority students in chemistry and chemical engineering was 7.3 percent and 1.1 percent, respectively, and these numbers have grown to 14.7 percent and 16.4 percent, respectively, for the 2020–2021 academic year.

Hoby Wedler, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hoby’s, shared his experience as a blind chemist and entrepreneur. Wedler spoke about his high school chemistry experience, stating that although his teacher inspired him to pursue a career in chemistry, he was told that it would be nearly impossible for him to succeed in a field based heavily on visual information. Wedler said that his response to this pushback was “nobody can see atoms, so there’s no reason chemistry shouldn’t be a cerebral science.” He shared his academic experience and the challenges he overcame. For example, he used a 3D printer in graduate school to feel what his peers were able to see on a graphical user interface. Wedler then explained that his passion for teaching translated into his current career as an entrepreneur where he focuses on translating science into a language that sales and marketing teams can understand. Wedler explained that he used this philosophy to launch a nonprofit called Accessible Science that hosted an annual chemistry camp for blind students. The goal of this camp, he said, was not to get the students excited about chemistry, but rather to show them that they can follow any career path, no matter how visually dependent that path might seem.

Christine Grant, Associate Dean of Faculty Advancement at North Carolina State University and President of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), gave a talk on creating a culture of inclusion. Grant pointed out that these issues have been discussed for decades (see, for example, NRC, 2000 , 2003 ). Noting the importance of celebrating the stories and successes of chemists and chemical engineers, Grant stressed the significance of mentoring relationships, but stated that “it is important to understand that your mentor does not have to … look just like you for the relationship to work,” and impactful mentors can be found through unanticipated mechanisms. She finished her talk by sharing information on the All for Good campaign within AIChE, which works to increase inclusion at every stage of the career continuum. She also highlighted the Future of STEM Scholars Initiative (FOSSI) at AIChE, which gives scholarships to students pursuing STEM careers at historically black colleges and universities.

A participant inquired about information on models for peer mentorship. Echegoyen noted that there is a successful model used in the BUILDing Scholars program where sophomores mentor incoming freshman. Grant shared that she helped to run a set of peer mentoring summits for women of color engineering faculty, as she found that many women had never even met their peers. Althaus added that DEI work is everyone’s responsibility, and the more we work to cultivate that message, the more people will be willing to engage students and serve as mentors. Another participant asked the speakers about the possibility of skepticism among individuals within primarily white institutions when efforts are made to increase diversity. Echegoyen answered by stressing the importance of mentoring and training in DEI. She added that having conversations with both the leaders and the students at those institutions about being open to different cultures and offering educational resources on microaggressions are important. Wedler noted “it’s all about the mindset. With the right mindset, everybody can embrace everybody else, regardless of what they look like or what they sound like or who they are.”

KEYNOTE: WOMEN AND UNDERREPRESENTED MINORITY GRADUATE STUDENTS IN CHEMISTRY AND STEM

Geraldine Richmond, Presidential Chair in Science and Professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon and Founding Director of the Committee on the Advancement of Women Chemists (COACh), shared her views (via a pre-recorded presentation) on women and URM graduate students in chemistry and STEM. Richmond started by sharing that COACh was founded in the late 1990s after she had spoken with several mid-career women in chemistry who expressed frustration over how they were treated within their profession because of their gender. Once COACh was established, a series of workshops were conducted to help women build skills needed to advance their careers. Richmond stated that in addition to reaching more than 25,000 women through attendance at COACh workshops to date, the program also expanded its reach in 2012 to offer workshops and networking opportunities to women scientists in developing countries.

The majority of Richmond’s talk focused on data that COACh Research recently published on the factors contributing to the low retention of women and URM students in U.S. chemistry departments ( Stockard et al., 2021 ). Richmond explained that the research was based on a survey produced by the American Chemical Society (ACS) that asked graduate students questions around four topics: (1) their relationship with their advisor, (2) the degree of support they receive from their peers, (3) their financial support, and (4) their career aspirations. Highlights from this research include:

• URM students, particularly men, do not feel that they receive an equal level of support from their peers;
• 37 percent of master’s students feel that they do not have adequate funding, and the percentage is even lower for students from minority-serving institutions;
• women are less likely to believe that they will finish their PhD and remain in the chemical sciences;
• and URM students are more likely to express aspirations to become a professor if there is just one URM faculty member in the department.

Richmond concluded her talk by emphasizing that “the success of graduate students is the key to [the] success of faculty, their research, the department, and the institution.”

SESSION II: COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Session II included open dialogue and conversations about DEI in the chemical sciences. As this workshop was held virtually, a dedicated Slack workspace 2 was used as the platform for these conversations. Participants were given 1 hour to engage in small group discussions around seven predetermined topics (see Table 1 ). The workshop planning committee members guided and observed the conversations, posting questions to prompt participant reactions and feedback. Following 1 hour of discussion, each planning committee member gave a 5-minute summary of the discourse from their group. Highlights from these summaries are shown in Table 1 .

SESSION III: EMERGING PROGRAMS AND NEEDS

Session III served to highlight emerging programs that work to increase DEI and discuss examples of the needs to advance DEI in the chemical sciences. Judy Kim, Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Senior Associate Dean of the Graduate Division at the University of California, San Diego, spoke about the ACS Bridge Project. Kim shared that the ACS Bridge Project was established in 2019 and aims to enhance the number of students who are able to earn a doctoral degree in the chemical sciences. As a member of the advisory board for the project, she stated

2 See https://join.slack.com/t/diversityinchem/shared_invite/zt-pa34fnbb-kKF8x9OUpGEXKMI2YY5yDQ .

TABLE 1 Topics for Conversation and Highlights of the Discussions Held in Slack During Session II

a The listed highlights are the rapporteur’s summary of the main discussion points made by individual participants, and the statements have not been endorsed or verified by the National Academies.

NOTE: The discussion highlights are taken directly from comments made by the workshop participants.

that the motivation for its development was the downward trend from the associate level to the doctoral level in the percentage of underrepresented students earning degrees. The project now has 9 sites and 20 partners across the nation that can accept students from the program into a master’s or postbaccalaureate program, with the ultimate goal of helping these students continue to doctoral programs. Kim stated that students interested in the project apply for all 29 schools at one time, and once enrolled in a program, the ACS Bridge students are supported based on the structure of the individual program. As an example, she described the current ACS Bridge program at the University of California, San Diego, where ACS Bridge students are offered full financial support and are provided with at least four mentors during their completion of the master’s program. Kim finished her talk by sharing that the project provides coaching to the students for PhD applications, although the students are not required to stay at the same university that they were placed in through ACS Bridge.

David Asai, Senior Director for Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, shared strategies to advance racial and ethnic diversity in science. Asai began by explaining that instead of the term URM, he chooses to use the acronym PEER, which stands for Persons Excluded from science because of their Ethnicity or Race. He continued that the rate of persistence of PEERs in STEM is historically poor even though a myriad of interventions have been applied over the past decades. Asai noted that these interventions have aimed to fix the student and not the institution, which is not sufficient to achieve real and lasting change. Rather, Asai said, strategies should be adopted that integrate both diversity and equity framing. He defined diversity framing as quantitative and resulting in programs that focus on students, and defined equity framing as qualitative and focused on culture change. Asai then presented information on the Gilliam Graduate Fellowship Initiative created in 2005. He explained that until the Initiative was paused in 2014, it

was a strictly diversity-framed program and therefore had several shortcomings. The program reemerged in 2015 with a dual focus in diversity and equity, where the student is supported and there is a focus on the training environment. He continued that both the student and the advisor need to apply for the fellowship together, and in order to accept the award the advisor must commit to a year-long course on culturally aware mentorship. Asai concluded that the impacts of this year-long course include advisors disseminating what they learned to others at their home institutions and forming supportive communities.

Allyn Kaufmann, Whitespace & Innovation Lead, Research and Development for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Consumer Healthcare’s U.S. market, presented on changing the culture and systems within the chemical sciences industry. Kaufmann stated that the financial case for gender and ethnic diversity is strong, as increased diversity leads to higher performing companies with a 25 percent better chance of positive financial performance. He considered the mismatch between the chemical workforce and U.S. population demographics, and posited that it is in part due to the lack of inclusion of Latinx, Native American, and Black populations in the leadership at companies. Kaufmann went on to say that GSK Consumer Healthcare has had success in DEI initiatives because of a focus on people and communities, rather than just financial incentives. Kaufmann argued that having diverse leaders will lead to culture change in companies, and shared that GSK has committed to having 45 percent female representation in senior roles and 30 percent ethnically diverse leaders in vice president and above roles by 2025. He listed several other meaningful actions that companies can take, including internal policy reconciliation; focus on wage gaps, talent progression, and succession; and tackling invisibility bias, which has been important for Kaufmann as a member of the Native American community. He outlined additional opportunities that companies have provided, including recruiting and professional development conferences, apprenticeships, and internal campaigns and partnerships with community leaders and organizations. Kaufmann concluded that it is important for STEM companies to have programs and activities that allow URM employees to shine.

Sheryl Burgstahler, Founder and Director of Accessible Technology Services at the University of Washington, presented on the benefits of universal design to ensure the inclusion of students with disabilities. She began by stating that students with disabilities may not feel welcome in some programs that have been mentioned throughout the workshop. Burgstahler continued that students who would otherwise be qualified for a program or institution might not be able to engage or participate because of accessibility issues. She directs two groups at the University of Washington that work to increase accessibility and inclusion: the IT Accessibility Team, which focuses on information technology, and the Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology Center, which works with students with disabilities and helps other programs to help them be more inclusive. Burgstahler said that when working with other programs, they promote the application of universal design, which is a framework to help individuals think about how to make any initiative more inclusive and accessible (see Figure 3 ). Universal design, she said, is about making all students feel welcome and designing products and environments to be usable by all people to the greatest extent possible without the need for adaptation or specialized design. Burgstahler listed a variety of ways to increase accessibility, including providing multiple ways for participants to learn and engage, using text-based material, providing descriptive text for hyperlinks and images, and making instructions and expectations clear. She concluded by emphasizing that universal design is about continuous progress, and it is simply a process that can benefit everyone.

A participant raised a question about the inclusion of refugees at institutions. Kim commented that inclusion should not only encompass underrepresented students but it is also important to provide support for all groups, as much as possible. Asai was asked about encouraging other organizations to adopt the diversity and equity framing model that he presented, and he noted that the scientific community should strive to continue to make improvements to the current culture of science. Another participant asked about potential options for “low hanging fruit” when moving toward universal design in a classroom. Bergstahler responded that there are many opportunities, but in a physical classroom a good place to start may be the furniture. She suggested that having adjustable tables in classrooms can be one simple way to increase accessibility and include all students in small group discussions.

Rigoberto Hernandez, Gompf Family Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, Director of OXIDE, and planning committee member, closed the workshop with his thoughts on the future of DEI in the chemical sciences. He stressed that a sustained discussion is needed to implement and foster a culture of diversity. It is important to integrate these discussions into all aspects of scientific research, said Hernandez, so that we can strive for and achieve inclusive excellence. Hernandez also shared his views on the benefit of creating a learning community in which individuals actively seek answers and information together to guide and advance their understanding of how to foster a diverse and inclusive environment. He reiterated that the scientific community should be held accountable, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to work toward an inclusive culture. Hernandez ended by saying “if we create an environment that is desirable for people from diverse backgrounds … they will choose to opt in—and that’s the environment we want to have.”

Burgstahler, S. (Ed.) 2015. Universal design in higher education, second edition: From principles to practice . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

NAS, NAE, and IOM (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine). 2011. Expanding underrepresented minority participation: America’s science and technology talent at the crossroads . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/12984 .

NCSES (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics). 2021. Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering: 2021 . Special Report NSF 21-321. https://ncses.nsf.gov/wmpd .

NRC (National Research Council). 2000. Women in the chemical workforce: A workshop report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable . Washington, DC: National Academy Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/10047 .

NRC. 2003. Minorities in the chemical workforce: Diversity models that work: A workshop report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/10653 .

Stockard, J., C. M. Rohlfing, and G. L. Richmond. 2021. Equity for women and underrepresented minorities in STEM: Graduate experiences and career plans in chemistry. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 118(4):e2020508118.

Wu, M. L., H. N. Cheng, S. Shah, and R. Rich. 2014. Career challenges and opportunities in the global chemistry enterprise. ACS Symposium Series 1169(1):1–28.

DISCLAIMER: This Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was prepared by Jessica Wolfman as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop. The statements recorded here are those of the individual workshop participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all workshop participants, the planning committee, the Chemical Sciences Roundtable, or the National Academies.

REVIEWERS: To ensure that this Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief meets institutional standards for quality and objectivity, it was reviewed in draft form by Carlos Gonzalez , National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Jean Tom , Bristol Myers Squibb. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the process. We thank staff member Jennifer Cohen for reading and providing helpful comments on this manuscript.

Planning committee members were Carlos Gonzalez, National Institute of Standards and Technology; Ian Henry, Procter & Gamble; Rigoberto Hernandez, Johns Hopkins University; Malika Jeffries-El, Boston University; Mary Kirchhoff, American Chemical Society; Cheryl Leggon, Georgia Institute of Technology; and Leyte Winfield, Spelman College. National Academies’ staff were Jessica Wolfman and Kesiah Clement.

ABOUT THE CHEMICAL SCIENCES ROUNDTABLE

The Chemical Sciences Roundtable provides a neutral forum to advance the understanding of issues in the chemical sciences and technologies that affect government, industry, academic, national laboratory, and nonprofit sectors and the interactions among them and to furnish a vehicle for education, exchange of information, and discussion of issues and trends that affect the chemical sciences. The roundtable accomplishes its objectives by holding annual meetings of its members and by organizing webinars and workshops on relevant important topics.

Chemical Sciences Roundtable members are Linda Broadbelt ( Co-Chair ), Northwestern University; Michael J. Fuller ( Co-Chair ), Chevron Energy Technology Company; Brian Baynes , MODO Global Technologies; David Berkowitz , National Science Foundation; Michael R. Berman , Air Force Office of Scientific Research; Martin Burke , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Miles Fabian , National Institutes of General Medical Sciences; Laura Gagliardi , The University of Chicago; Bruce Garrett , U.S. Department of Energy; Franz Geiger , Northwestern University; Carlos Gonzalez , National Institute of Standards and Technology; Malika Jeffries-El , Boston University; Mark E. Jones , Dow Chemical (Retired); Jack Kaye , National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Mary Kirchhoff , American Chemical Society; Robert E. Maleczka, Jr. , Michigan State University; David Myers , GCP Applied Technologies; Timothy Patten , National Science Foundation; Nicola Pohl , Indiana University; Ashutosh Rao , U.S. Food and Drug Administration; Sunita Satyapal , U.S. Department of Energy; and Jake Yeston , American Association for the Advancement of Science.

This activity was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant CHE-1546732 and the U.S. Department of Energy under Grant DE-FG02-07ER15872. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency that provided support for the project.

Suggested citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Diversity, equity, and inclusion in chemistry and chemical engineering: Proceedings of a workshop—in brief. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. http://doi.org/10.17226/26334 .

Division on Earth and Life Studies

Copyright 2021 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

A diverse workforce and inclusive workspaces are important components of future chemical and chemical engineering research. The workshop Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, held virtually on May 25-26, 2021, by the Chemical Sciences Roundtable, provided a venue for the chemical sciences community to discuss ideas and best practices for creating more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments. Specifically, the workshop (1) explored barriers to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that are specific to chemistry and chemical engineering, (2) examined successful programs and best practices for increasing DEI in these fields, and (3) explored innovative approaches to create a culture in which all have equal opportunities to participate and advance. Ultimately, the workshop provided a forum for academic, government, and industrial participants to increase awareness of potential barriers to DEI and gain information needed to create more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments in their workplaces. This document summarizes the presentations and discussions that took place during the workshop.

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May 20, 2024

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Gender gaps remain for many women scientists, study finds

by Sherri Buri McDonald, University of Oregon

As more women have entered the biomedical field, they're getting a bigger share of research grants, and the gender gap in research funding appears to be narrowing, but the gains have been uneven.

That's because, at U.S. universities, most of those research dollars are going to senior women scientists, and their younger counterparts are missing out on the large grants that can advance science and careers, according to a new study by a University of Oregon researcher and collaborators.

Their findings were published May 17 in Nature Biotechnology .

"As the resources are increasingly flowing toward women, the disparity between senior men scientists and senior women scientists is closing," said co-author Chris Liu, an associate professor of management with the UO's Lundquist College of Business. "But the gap is persisting between junior men and women."

Liu collaborated with Andy S. Back, assistant professor in management and strategy at the University of Hong Kong Business School, and two researchers at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business: Waverly Ding, associate professor of management and organization, and Beril Yalcinkaya, a doctoral candidate in strategic management and entrepreneurship.

They examined the distribution of 2.3 million U.S. National Institutes of Health grants to biomedical scientists from 1985 to 2017.

Also, the researchers were struck by the contrast between two different sets of data. The first shows a steady climb in the percentage of life sciences doctoral degree recipients who are women, from roughly 30% in 1985 to 55% in 2020.

The second shows a persistent gender gap in the probability of holding a full-time tenured academic position in biomedicine. For the past three decades, the probability has been about 20% for women and nearly 40% for men.

"This is an important trend that has been overlooked," Liu said. "To fully realize the benefits of diversity, it is important that disadvantaged groups achieve the academic freedom afforded by grant funding and tenure. Our study reveals a systemic issue that needs to be addressed for young women scientists to advance through the ranks and have the greatest possible impact on science and society."

Possible solutions could include earmarking research funding for young women scientists and offering grant-writing assistance and other supports, Liu said.

Journal information: Nature Biotechnology

Provided by University of Oregon

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Parity reached in male/female ratio of chemistry students

By Paul Gallagher 2012-05-01T00:00:00+01:00

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The role of women in chemistry finally parallels that of men, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry's first ever female President.

Professor Yellowlees standing in front of past portraits of RSC Presidents

A striking gender divide persists in other STEM subjects. Despite total number increases in the number of both girls and boys sitting physics, the divide remains at approximately 1 girl for every 4 boys achieving A-level physics. In Maths, 60 % of A-level candidates were male while more than 77% of males studied 'other sciences'.   

Professor Yellowlees, who becomes the first female RSC President in July, said diversity in the 21st century is much more than about simple gender issues.    

'Diversity these days also means taking into account what areas of chemistry women are representing and that has also changed significantly in recent years. We are seeing not just parity among the male/female A-level chemistry ratio and not just a significant rise in the number of women academics, but also the role of female chemists in all sorts of walks of life is becoming more influential all the time.'  

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PhD Theses in Chemistry: A Gender Study Covering the Year (2000-2014

This paper introduces an examination of the doctoral research output of a sample of 99 PhD theses which were awarded their doctorate at the Department of Chemistry, Banaras Hindu University during (2000-2014). Results show that gender equality in 99 PhD theses 62(62.63%) male and 37(37.37%) female were awarded their doctorate in Chemistry. The outcomes demonstrate more noteworthy uniformity in gender equality in the number of male and female who successfully completed their doctoral studies.

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The 70th Geography Foundation Day of the Department at B.H.U. was celebrated on the 19 August 2016. The teaching of geography at the Banaras Hindu University was initiated at Intermediate level in July 1944 in the Department of Geology under chairmanship of late Prof. Rajnath. An independent and full-fledged Department of Geography was, however, created on the 19 August 1946 [Monday, Bhadrapad Krishna 7th Samvata 2003, Janmasthmi] with late Prof. Harbans Lal Chhibber [1899-1955] as its first Head. During Prof. Chhibber’s regime (1946-1955) late Dr. Ram Lochan Singh [1917-2001], late Phanishwar Kumar Dutt, and late Dr. Parmeshwar Dayal (1920-2015, later shifted to Patna University) joined the department. Late Mr. N. Leiter, Dr. Shanti Lal Kayastha, Dr. Anand Swaroop Jauhari and late Dr. Ujagir Singh had joined the University Department later, while Smt. Bibha Mukherjee and Dr. Nawal Kishore Pd. Sinha joined the Department in Mahila Mahavidyalaya and Central Hindu College, Kamachcha, respectively. In 1957 (late) Prof. Kashi Nath Singh [1932-2013] had also joined the department as faculty member. This paper presents the short story of Geography at B.H.U. 1946-2015, and highlights major achievements.

Faculty of Education, Alumni Association of Education - Banaras Hindu University (AAEBHU), Kamachha, Varanasi – 221010 (Uttar Pradesh), India.

Sunil Kumar Singh

The ‘Survey of Researches in Education (Volume-III)’ contains abstraction and compilation of 230 researches including 11 doctoral and 219 PG dissertations and the trend reports of researches conducted in Faculty of Education, Banaras Hindu University (B.H.U.), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh (India) during the year 1952 to 2020. These researches have been categorized specifically into several research areas. Some most popular areas are foundations of education, teacher education, inclusive education, contemporary issues in education, pedagogy of subjects and so on. An attempt has been made to include the objectives, methodology and findings of study in most of the abstracts. It will serve a wide range of researchers in the field of Education, Teacher Education and all those interested in improvement of teaching-learning anywhere globally.

Indian Journal of Information, Library & Society

punit kumar singh

The libraries are now-a-days more concerned with identifying the increasing information needs of its users and provide them the latest information resources. The advent of information and communication technologies have made a huge impact on all aspects of education including teaching & learning, institutional management, library services, research & development, information dissemination, discovery and its delivery. Libraries are acquiring so much information and are spending so huge amount of money on procuring the information, if the users are unable to make optimum use of this information the efforts and money will be a waste. Users should have knowledge to know how to find, evaluate, and use information effectively to solve a particular problem or make a decision, whether the information can be retrieved from a computer, a book, a government agency or any of a number of other possible resources. For this purpose information literacy programme to be conducted by library has become a necessity. In this paper an attempt is made to describe information literacy; what efforts have been taken by government of India to bridge the gap between information poor and information rich people; various information literacy programs initiated by state governments at community level; information literacy at higher education level in different universities; information about the Banaras Hindu University and its library system as well as its collection; information about the various information literacy programme conducted by Banaras Hindu University Library system is discussed. Please Cite This Article As:

Library & Information Science Education in the Universities of India: Growth and development of research

Samayita Dutta , Debdas Mondal

Abstract: The scenario of LIS education and research in India and its overall development is very much progressive today. The number of library and information science departments has been increasing from 1960s and over time this subject has gradually emerged as a stream. In this study we will review the state and institutional distribution of the subject over time. As on 2017 the review has been done on total 1225 number of theses. Research in this subject has been steadily increasing since the 1980s and has so far been largely in the states of West. Bengal, Karnataka & Maharashtra. Karnataka University has highest number of theses among all the universities in India.This paper also highlighted on the total number and distribution of theses on the basis of subject content on LIS education since independence constituting all the Universities and institutions of India and also depicts the scope of interdisciplinary work of this subject field of study. The research growth and subject category wise distribution of the PhD theses of The Universities of Burdwan also taken into account. Community Information Service, Information System, Sources and Services and Bibliometrics study receives sheer percentage of work. The findings show that in The University of Burdwan the major work also have been done on the same field of study.

Kavita Sharma

This BIBLIOGRAPHY was first published on 31 December 1993, and updated in 2009 (ref. Singh, Rana P.B. 2009. This is the latest version (updated 15 June 2017), which consists of 1545 [63,640 words] entries, classified into 16 thematic groups: A. Books, mostly in English, with select annotation: 359, B. Research Papers & Essays (mostly English): 650, C (i). Persian Works, Translated: 4, C (ii). Urdu Sources: 4, D. The Sanskrit sources on Kashi/ Varanasi (selected): 59, E. Books/ articles in Hindi: 101, F. Marathi Sources: 2, G. Bengali Sources: 3, H. Published Reports/ Government Documents: 27, I. Electronic Publications: 22, J. Film (English): 11, K. Japanese Sources (in Japanese): 13, L. Unpublished Dissertations, selected: 115, M. Unpublished Reports: 10, N. Govt. Publications, Census, etc. : 11, O. Unpublished Reports (Varanasi: Inscribing Heritage Zones for WHL UNESCO): 03, P. Unpublished (Undergraduate) Fieldwork Projects, The University of Wisconsin Program: College Year in India: 152. ## This is prepared & fully protected under copyright © by Rana P. B. Singh and Pravin S. Rana; to be used strictly and only by having written permission from the authors/compilers.

Ravi S. Singh: Legacy & Memorials

This report-cum-appraisal of the life and works of (late) Prof. Ravi S. Singh (1971-2021), Professor of Geography at Banaras Hindu University, narrates the academic story and the research themes dealt with him (covering 8 books and anthologies, 108 research and appraisal papers, 25 book reviews, 6 INSA evaluation reports of Cultural and Historical geography, and some popular articles), which includes geographical thought, status of geographical teaching, intricacies and fallacies of geography in higher studies in India, and several innovative ideas that would be taken in future. Full list of his publications are also presented.

Drashti Dixit

(Coauthored) Studies in Nepali History and Society (SINHAS)

Bebika Khawas

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School of Chemistry

On this page, school of chemistry represents at network for gender equality.

Drs. Liz Gilchrist and Florence McCarthy attended the 2024 meeting of the All-Ireland Network for Gender Equality for Chemistry in Trinity College last week.

It was a very informative day with lots of discussion on promoting EDI and sharing learned lessons and best practices among the Chemistry Schools and Departments around the island of Ireland. 

Talks included: 

• Athena Swan Silver - Graeme Watson, TCD
• Pathways to Parity - Paul Kavanagh, QUB
• I&D at RSC - Ilaria Meazzini, RSC
• Missing Elements - Elaine O'Reilly, UCD

Scoil na Ceimic

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Graduate School

Biochemistry (ph.d.), biochemistry (ph.d.) | graduate.

Our Biochemistry doctoral students are at the forefront of biochemical research and molecular medicine, examining biological mechanisms underlying human disease; they are finding new ways to detect and attack diseases and immunological disorders like cancer, neurological disorders, and cardiovascular disease.

Graduates of the Ph.D. in Biochemistry program at Howard's Graduate School are prepared for careers at top research universities and senior-level research positions in biomedical and related industries. The program's key strengths in molecular microbiology, proteomics and genetics, bioinformatics, and drug design and discovery make us a nexus for collaborative investigations between biochemistry researchers and clinicians. You'll learn to apply biochemical techniques, including NMR spectroscopy, crystallography, and single-molecule methods as well as contemporary approaches to cell culture and genetic analysis to answer key questions about the pathogenesis of specific diseases and the development of effective drug therapies. You'll also enjoy the close mentorship of faculty who are committed to your professional development. Our faculty are experts in several areas of biochemistry, including analysis of molecular structure, proteomics and genetics, tumor biology, structural biology, enzymology, RNA catalysis, stress response, and RNA modification. As you advance in the program, you'll become increasingly involved in laboratory research and the critical analysis of biochemical literature. Our graduate seminar series offers a venue to present your early-stage research. Students may pursue a dual M.D./Ph.D. degree.

Program Snapshot

      ❱  72 credit hours        ❱  Full-time       ❱  On-campus format       ❱  Degree: Ph.D.       ❱  Dual degree: M.D./Ph.D.

Application Deadlines

Spring 2024 entry:         ❱  No spring entry 

Fall 2024 entry:         ❱  Dec. 1, 2023 (early deadline)       ❱  Feb. 15, 2024 (priority deadline)       ❱  Apr. 15, 2024 (final deadline)

Applicants should submit their applications as early as possible for earlier consideration of departmental funding opportunities. Applicants have until the final deadline to apply. However, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis throughout the admissions cycle. 

Dr. Zaki Sherif

Dr. matthew george, jr., angela wilson, program details.

• Degree Classification: Graduate
• Related Degrees: M.D. / Ph.D., Ph.D.

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Application for admission.

• Online GradCAS application
• Statement of purpose/ Statement of academic interest ( 500-1,000 words )
• GRE scores  not required
• Official transcripts sent to GradCAS
• 3 letters of recommendation
• Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university or the international equivalent 
• Resume or Curriculum Vitae
• Autobiographical statement ( 500-750 words )

GRE Required?

Gre preferred minimums.

• GRE Verbal Reasoning: N/A
• GRE Quantitative Reasoning: N/A
• GRE Analytical Writing: N/A

GPA Required Minimums

• Overall GPA minimum: 3.0
• Undergrad GPA minimum: 3.0

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The following course prerequisites are required. Applicants are required to have at least a B average in these prerequisites.   No expiration date for recommended prerequisites.

• Biology (college-level courses, 8 semester credit hrs)
• General Chemistry (college-level courses, 8 semester credit hrs)
• Organic Chemistry (college-level courses, 8 semester credit hrs)
• Elementary Physical Chemistry (college-level course and lab, 4 semester credit hrs)
• Physics (college-level courses, 8 semester credit hrs)
• Calculus  (college-level course, 3 semester credit hrs)

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Evaluator type accepted:

• Professor (Required)
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• Other 

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Diversifying the PhD

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Making courses fit for different purposes

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PhDs come in an increasing variety of shapes and structures to address different societal purposes

PhDs are evolving. There’s an increasing acknowledgement that most PhD graduates will not move into an academic career, or even a non-academic research position. Funders and institutions are therefore providing students with more training and opportunities to help them develop skills that will be useful in any future career.

However, there’s a catch. A PhD is already time-pressured, so adding in more training requirements as new skills demands arise – programming, entrepreneurship, public engagement, emotional intelligence  – cannot be the answer to everything. What we need is a diversification of the PhD experience.

That was the message of a recent Westminster Higher Education Forum policy conference on the next steps for postgraduate research in the UK. Among the projects presented there, one that particularly caught my attention was the Faraday Institution’s PhD training in battery technology . Students are provided with a range of support and opportunities designed to encourage them into careers in the battery sector, including career coaching, a mini-MBA project to build entrepreneurial skills, visits to different research sites and a three-month industrial placement. The approach has been effective: the first PhD cohort all remained in the battery sector after graduating, working across industry (including launching start-ups), academia and policymaking.

Another intriguing pilot is the Co(l)laboratory programme in Nottinghamshire. This funds PhD projects and research apprenticeships that are codesigned with local people, ensuring that the research is relevant to the local community and helping to train the civic leaders of the future. None of the PhD projects announced so far deal with chemistry-related issues, but I can imagine many environmental and medicinal chemistry projects would suit such an approach very well.

Co(l)laboratory also explicitly advertises itself to people with non-traditional academic backgrounds. This is another important part of diversifying PhDs: making them attractive to a wider range of people. There’s still a perception that successful PhD candidates need to have a stellar academic track record (even though, as Dean Thomas argues , exams aren’t necessarily that great at measuring depth of understanding). Even students with high grades may find themselves excluded by the standard PhD structure: full-time study, low stipends and inflexible funding durations are unappealing or impossible for many, including carers, people with chronic health conditions and those from low-income backgrounds.

While innovative course structures could help to broaden participation in various ways, inclusivity should be a core principle of all PhDs. To achieve that, we need to keep on experimenting with how PhDs can best serve society through both the research and the training that they produce.

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Three doctoral students selected for Department of Energy program

5/22/2024 By | Katya Hrichak , Cornell University Graduate School

Three doctoral students were selected for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (DOE SCGSR) Program’s 2023 Solicitation 2 Cycle.

Michael Colletta, a doctoral candidate in applied physics; Virginia McGhee, a doctoral candidate in chemistry and chemical biology; and Liana Shpani, a physics doctoral candidate, are three of 86 graduate students selected for the program.

This solicitation cycle’s graduate students represent 31 states and Puerto Rico, come from 57 universities, and will be conducting research at 16 DOE national laboratories.

“Working at the National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) will provide me with access to specialized instruments not available at Cornell,” said McGhee . “I will learn synthesis techniques from the field’s leading experts and will bring back that knowledge to share with my colleagues.”

DOE SCGSR awardees “work on research projects of significant importance to the Office of Science mission that addresses critical energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges at national and international scales,” according to the award announcement .

Colletta’s research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory will be in the DOE’s basic science for clean energy and decarbonization research area, McGhee’s research at NREL will be in instruments and techniques research and development for electron and scanning probe microscopy, and Shpani’s research at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will be in accelerator science.

“I am honored to be selected for the SCGSR Program,” said McGhee. “I am excited to work with and learn from the world’s leading scientists in renewable energy research.”

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Michael Wentzel Appointed Augsburg University’s Lindstrom Professor of Chemistry

“We are so fortunate to have Michael Wentzel on our faculty,” said Paula O’Loughlin, provost and senior vice president for academic and student affairs. “He is an extraordinary teacher and an outstanding scientist. Even more significant is his generosity as a colleague and mentor. By engaging undergraduate students as partners in his own impressive research program, he helps students unlock possibilities they never imagined before, both for themselves and for a more sustainable future.” 

Wentzel is an organic chemist whose research focuses on the growing field of green chemistry , a systems-based approach that incorporates sustainability considerations into the the design, development, and implementation of chemical products and processes. As one of the first green chemists to be named a fellow by the Science Communication Network in 2018–19, he also works to help students and other researchers communicate their methods and findings to the public more effectively. 

Wentzel received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Minnesota in 2011. He joined Augsburg’s chemistry department in 2013, where he currently oversees STEM summer research and serves as department chair. He also serves as interim director of Augsburg’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Graduate Opportunity.   

“Michael Wentzel’s approach to teaching and scholarship is exactly the kind of leadership Terry and Janet Lindstrom desired to support with their transformative investment in our new School of Natural Sciences,” said Augsburg President Paul Pribbenow. “Whether in the lab, in the classroom, or on the chemistry club intramural basketball team, he is steadfast in his commitment to hands-on learning and in saying ‘yes’ to helping our students reach their goals.”

The Terry ’73 and Janet Lindstrom Endowed Professorship of Chemistry was established in 2024. Terry Lindstrom, a current member of Augsburg’s Board of Regents and a retired distinguished research fellow at Eli Lilly and Company, holds numerous patents supporting life-changing drugs, including Evista and Cymbalta. Together, the Lindstroms have provided generous philanthropic support to Augsburg students for more than 40 years.