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Gender, seniority, and self‑citation practices in political science Michelle L. Dion1   · Sara McLaughlin Mitchell2   · Jane L. Sumner3  Received: 29 July 2019 © Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2020

Abstract Many studies in political science and other disciplines show that published research by women is cited less often than research by male peers in the same discipline. While previous studies have suggested that self-citation practices may explain the gender citation gap in political science, few studies have evaluated whether men and women self-cite at different rates. Our article examines the relationship between author gender, author experience and seniority, and authors’ decisions to include self-citations using a new dataset that includes all articles published in 22 political science journals between 2007 and 2016. Contrary to our expectations, we fail to reject the null hypothesis that men are more likely cite their previous work than women, whether writing alone or co-authoring with others of the same sex. Mixed gender author teams are significantly less likely to self-cite. We also observe lower rates of self-citation in general field journals and Comparative/International Relations subfield journals. The results imply that the relationship between gender and self-citation depends on several factors such as collaboration and the typical seniority and experience of authors on the team. Keywords  Citations · Gender · Political science · Sociology of science Mathematical Subject Classification  91C99 · 91F10 · 91D99 JEL Classification  A11 · A14 · B54 · J44

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2019 European Conference on Politics and Gender (ECPG), Amsterdam, Netherlands and the 2019 Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) Annual Conference, Chicago, IL. We are grateful to Kathy Dolan and Kim Fridkin for comments. * Michelle L. Dion [email protected] 1

Department of Political Science, McMaster University, Kenneth Taylor Hall 527,1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M4, Canada

2

Department of Political Science, University of Iowa, 341 Schaeffer Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA

3

Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, 1472 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA



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Scientometrics

Many studies in political science and other disciplines show that published research by women is cited less often than research by male peers in the same discipline.1 Achieving a critical mass of female scholars in research areas helps to improve the overall number of citations to women’s work, but the gender gap remains, as male authors cite significantly fewer works by women, even in fields where women constitute the majority of scholars (Dion et al 2018). Beyond the opportunities for citing work by women (based on the density of female scholars), questions also emerge about whether gender citation gaps are driven by differences in self-citation practices. Self-citation involves the authors of an article citing work in the pap