Male researchers are more likely than women to positively present their research through use of terms such as "novel" or "excellent," according to a study published in the BMJ.
Researchers examined titles and abstracts from 101,720 clinical research articles and about 6.2 million general life science articles in the PubMed database, published between 2002 and 2017. They searched for use of 25 positive terms in the titles and abstracts,
They found that articles in which both the first and last author were women used at least one of the 25 positive terms in 10.9 percent of titles or abstracts, compared to 12.2 percent in articles involving a male first or last author.
Positive presentation was associated with a 9.4 percent increase in subsequent citations in all clinical journals, the study showed.