There has only been a small uptick in the portion of female authors on academic papers from UK institutions, the Guardian reports.
According to the new Leiden Ranking of universities — put together by Leiden University's Center for Science and Technology Studies — the percentage of female authors from British universities increased from nearly 26 percent for studies published between 2006 and 2009 to 30 percent for studies published between 2014 and 2017, the Guardian adds, noting that this is the first time the ranking has examined the portion of female authors. The ranking relies on bibliographic data from the Web of Science.
In general, Leiden's Ludo Waltman and Nees Jan van Eck note in a blog post that European universities have slightly higher proportions of female authors than North American universities do. The Guardian notes, though, that the proportion of female authors varies by institute and points out that while 46 percent of research papers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine had female authors and 40 percent of papers out of King's College London did, 30 percent of University of Oxford and 28 percent of University of Cambridge papers had female authors.