Young Male and Female Scientists: A Quantitative Exploratory Study of the Changing Demographics of the Global Scientific Workforce

In this study, the global scientific workforce is explored through a large-scale, generational, and longitudinal approach. We examine 4.3 million nonoccasional scientists from 38 OECD countries publishing in 1990-2021. Our longitudinal interest is in the changing distribution of young male and female scientists over time across 16 STEMM disciplines. We unpack the details of the changing scientific workforce using ten 5-year age groups within each discipline. The usefulness of global bibliometric data sources in analyzing the scientific workforce along the four dimensions of gender, age, discipline, and time is tested. Traditional aggregated data about scientists in general hide a nuanced picture of the changing gender dynamics within and across disciplines and age groups. For instance, the pivotal role of medicine in the global scientific workforce is highlighted, with almost half of all scientists (45.98%) in the OECD area being primarily involved in medical research, and more than half of female scientists (55.02%) being disciplinarily located in medicine. Limitations of bibliometric datasets are explored and global studies are compared with national-level studies. The methodological choices and their implications are shown, and new opportunities for how to study scientists globally are discussed.