Lung cancer researchers, 2008–2013: their sex and ethnicity

Scientometrics, Nov 2015

This paper describes the process by which almost all authors of papers in the Web of Science (WoS) can be characterised by their sex and ethnicity or national background, based on their names. These are compared with two large databases of surnames and given names to determine to which of some 160 different ethnic groups they are most likely to belong. Since 2008 the authors of WoS papers are tagged with their addresses, and many have their given names if they appear on the paper, so the workforce composition of each country can be determined. Conversely, the current location of members of particular ethnic groups can be found. This will show the extent of a country’s “brain drain”, if any. Key results are shown for one subject area, and inter alia it appears that the majority of researchers of Indian origin who are active in lung cancer research are working in the USA. But East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) tend to stay in their country of birth.

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Lung cancer researchers, 2008–2013: their sex and ethnicity

Scientometrics Grant Lewison 0 1 2 3 Philip Roe 0 1 2 3 Richard Webber 0 1 2 3 Richard Sullivan 0 1 2 3 Richard Webber 0 1 2 3 0 Department of Geography, King's College London , Strand, London WC2R 2LS , UK 1 Evaluametrics Ltd , 157 Verulam Road, Saint Albans AL3 4DW , UK 2 Institute of Cancer Policy, Guy's Hospital, King's College London , Great Maze Pond, London SE1 6RT , UK 3 own country (OWN); other European country (EUR: Albania , Balkan, Belgium, Bosnia, Britain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech, Denmark, Estonia , Finland , France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Nordic , Norway , Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia , Spain , Sweden, Switzerland); Latin America (LAT: including Brazil, Guyana and Mexico); Levant and Mediterranean (LEV: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco , Saudi Arabia , Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine); Africa (AFR: Afrikaaner, Angola, Cameroon, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria , Sierra Leone , Somalia, Sudan, Uganda); South Asia (SAS: Bangladesh, Burma , India , Pakistan , Sri Lanka); China (CHI); other Asia (ASI: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Georgia, Iran, Iraq , Japan , Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal , Philippines, Singapore , Thailand, Vietnam); other non-European and Oceanic, OCE: Australia, Caribbean, Fiji, Indonesia , New Zealand This paper describes the process by which almost all authors of papers in the Web of Science (WoS) can be characterised by their sex and ethnicity or national background, based on their names. These are compared with two large databases of surnames and given names to determine to which of some 160 different ethnic groups they are most likely to belong. Since 2008 the authors of WoS papers are tagged with their addresses, and many have their given names if they appear on the paper, so the workforce composition of each country can be determined. Conversely, the current location of members of particular ethnic groups can be found. This will show the extent of a country's ''brain drain'', if any. Key results are shown for one subject area, and inter alia it appears that the majority of researchers of Indian origin who are active in lung cancer research are working in the USA. But East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) tend to stay in their country of birth. Lung cancer Onomastics National origins Sex Introduction There is continuing research interest in the sex and ethnic composition of research personnel. A brief survey of the literature in 2013–2014 indicates that there is a widespread concern about the problems faced by female researchers (no fewer than 24 countries were involved in such research, and there were 71 papers in the 2 years, including several exploring the problems in countries outwith North America and Western Europe, e.g., Gonenc et al. 2013; Homma et al. 2013; Bettachy et al. 2013; Isfandyari-Moghaddam and Hasanzadeh 2013; Garg and Kumar 2014) . A major survey of the situation in all the countries of the world and all science was published in Nature 2 years ago (Larivie`re et al. 2013); this showed that women scientists were in the minority in almost all countries, and only achieved parity with men, or a majority, in a few small states. However there is less interest in the situation of ethnic groups or of ‘‘foreign researchers’’. The situation in the USA has attracted particular attention from commentators. Because of public opinion against immigrants, bills were introduced in Congress in 1995 that would have imposed restrictions on foreign researchers inter alia and required their employers to pay a levy to train US workers (Reichhardt 1995) . Successful lobbying by universities and other employers defeated them (Reichhardt 1996) . Nevertheless, foreign researchers in the USA do not receive equal treatment (Jaeger et al. 2004; Anon 2004; Dalton 2005) which can make their situation difficult. There also appear to be problems for ethnic minority faculty members in the USA (Griffin et al. 2013; Pololi et al. 2013; Campbell et al. 2013; Hassouneh et al. 2014) . In fact, critical attention in the USA is focussed almost entirely on under-represented minorities (African-Americans, Hispanics, and in some cases Native Americans), and hardly at all on the problems that may be encountered by researchers of Asian origins, notably Chinese and Indians, who may have to cope with difficult immigration (Teich 2014), integration and living experiences when they move to the USA. In fact, as we shall see, they are hardly ‘‘under-represented minorities’’ but rather over-represented compared with their presence in the population. [A fuller survey of the relevant prior literature was given in Roe et al. (2014) .] The situation in other countries is also discussed sometimes. Thus several European countries have attracted criticism for being unfriendly to foreigne (...truncated)


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Grant Lewison, Philip Roe, Richard Webber, Richard Sullivan. Lung cancer researchers, 2008–2013: their sex and ethnicity, Scientometrics, 2015, pp. 105-117, Volume 106, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1007/s11192-015-1785-1