Effect of gender on collaborative associations of researchers in Malaysia

This study aims to find the level of gender-based assortativity in the association of researchers and investigate if gender has influence over social capital of researchers and their research performance in the context of a multi-ethnic nation, such as Malaysia.

Social network analysis is used as a primary research method to analyse the associations between the authors. Mann-Whitney test is used for testing the significant differences in research performance and social capital based on gender.

The assortative mixing patterns of 187 researchers revealed positive assortativity, meaning that more authors preferred to co-author with authors of their gender. No influence of gender was seen on the social capital of authors. However, gender did significantly influence the research productivity of authors.

This is one of the first studies that attempts to find the influence of gender on collaborative associations of researchers in Malaysia.