# The Effect of Gender Diversity on Scientific Team Impact: A Team Roles Perspective

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.23429 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23429/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 88 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Building a PubMed knowledge graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04308/) (2020)
- [Historical comparison of gender inequality in scientific careers across countries and disciplines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04103/) (2019)
- [Principles of scientific research team formation and evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1403.2787/) (2014)
- [Analyzing Linguistic Complexity and Scientific Impact](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11843/) (2019)
- [Team Power Dynamics and Team Impact: New Perspectives on Scientific Collaboration using Career Age as a Proxy for Team Power](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.04108/) (2021)
- [Flat Teams Drive Scientific Innovation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.06726/) (2022)
- [Gender differences in research areas and topics: An analysis of publications in 285 fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.01255/) (2018)
- [Regression for citation data: An evaluation of different methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.08877/) (2015)
- [Co-contributorship Network and Division of Labor in Individual Scientific Collaborations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10745/) (2019)
- [Is Coronavirus-Related Research Becoming More Interdisciplinary? A Perspective of Co-occurrence Analysis and Diversity Measure of Scientific Articles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.04344/) (2021)
- [The Impact of Heterogeneous Shared Leadership in Scientific Teams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15804/) (2023)
- [Gender-Based Homophily in Research: A Large-Scale Study of Man-Woman Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03935/) (2020)
- [Impact of Geographic Diversity on Citation of Collaborative Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11713/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Beyond Single-Dimension Novelty: How Combinations of Theory, Method, and Results-based Novelty Shape Scientific Impact](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12471/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The influence of gender diversity on the success of scientific teams is of great interest to academia. However, prior findings remain inconsistent, and most studies operationalize diversity in aggregate terms, overlooking internal role differentiation. This limitation obscures a more nuanced understanding of how gender diversity shapes team impact. In particular, the effect of gender diversity across different team roles remains poorly understood. To this end, we define a scientific team as all coauthors of a paper and measure team impact through five-year citation counts. Using author contribution statements, we classified members into leadership and support roles. Drawing on more than 130,000 papers from PLOS journals, most of which are in biomedical-related disciplines, we employed multivariable regression to examine the association between gender diversity in these roles and team impact. Furthermore, we apply a threshold regression model to investigate how team size moderates this relationship. The results show that (1) the relationship between gender diversity and team impact follows an inverted U-shape for both leadership and support groups; (2) teams with an all-female leadership group and an all-male support group achieve higher impact than other team types. Interestingly, (3) the effect of leadership-group gender diversity is significantly negative for small teams but becomes positive and statistically insignificant in large teams. In contrast, the estimates for support-group gender diversity remain significant and positive, regardless of team size.