Female researchers in the most cited works affiliated to Mexico

Abstract

Women have experienced many difficulties in order to get involved in a reserach activity. Despite the efforts, they maintain lower levels of representation at a worldwide level. For example, their engagement to science, publications registration, trustworthiness of their work, and participation in highly cited papers representation in the scientific literature has traditionally been very low. In Mexico, the 2021 report of the National System of Researchers evidenced that the acceptance of women (38 %) is lower than that of men. The purpose of the present study was to determine the participation of women affiliated to Mexican institutions in highly cited research papers, as well as, to identify the areas of knowledge with the largest female representation. We have performed a cuantitative bibliometric analysis in the Web of Science database to retrieve the papers that have received at least 800 citations. We identified 232 papers with this characteristic, but only 73 of them were considered since they involved at least one woman affiliated to Mexican institutions. Most of this production involved co-authorship, above all large collaborations with female and male authors. The largest production was published between 2006 and 2015. Biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology were the predominant areas of knowledge. The leading institutions involved in this research production were the Ministry of Health, the Mexican National Autonomous University and Cinvestav. The female Mexican scientists with the longest research experience, were the ones who opened the spaces for integration and participation in the most highly cited works.