The extent of gender and race/ethnicity imbalance in infectious disease dynamics research

Publication practices accumulate to affect credibility and career
advancement. Understanding authorship and citation practices is critical
to addressing inequities. While citation bias has been demonstrated in
several fields, it remains uncharacterized in infectious disease dynamics
(IDD), a quantitative, interdisciplinary domain highly visible during the
COVID-19 pandemic. We analyze IDD articles and their bibliographies from
2000-2019 using machine-learning algorithms to infer the gender and
race/ethnicity of each article's lead and senior author. We examine
authorship and citation patterns by gender and racial group across
geographic scales, including characterizing the author composition of each
article's bibliography relative to the field. Our analysis reveals
persistent gender and race imbalances in IDD research. Man-authored and
White-authored publications dominate the field, with little progress in
racial diversification of US and UK publications over the last two
decades. Woman-authored articles have the most representative citation
practices but are undercited, especially when women are senior authors. In
the US and UK, most citations feature White lead and senior authors, even
when citing articles have lead or senior authors of color. These findings
underscore the urgent need for more inclusive IDD research practices. We
discuss possible mechanisms and solutions to create opportunities for
researchers from underrepresented groups.