Comparison of two models: Do men experience a cumulative advantage in citations? Measuring the reinforcing effect of first received citations on the academic success of members of a social scientific graduate school in the Netherlands

Abstract

Achievements in the earlier stage of someone’s career are theorized to reinforce later achievements in the rest of their career. Earlier literature shows that this cumulative advantage also should be the case for achievements in the scientific world. Besides this, a fair number of differences in scientific success are observed between men and women. I hypothesize that male social scientists will experience a cumulative advantage of citations and that women will not experience this advantage, because they start with a disadvantage in citations in the beginning of their career. By comparing two models of inequality in a data sample from a social sciences graduate school in the Netherlands, it was found that this sample does not show any inequality between men and women concerning citations over their academic career. Looking at the overall trend of citations over someone’s career, there is no evidence found for a cumulative trend.