The prominent and heterogeneous gender disparities in scientific novelty: Evidence from biomedical doctoral theses

Meijun Liu, Zihan Xie, Alex Jie Yang, Chao Yu, Jian Xu, Ying Ding, Yi Bu

Abstract: Highlights•Employed fractional logistic regression and quantile regression models to investigate gender disparities in the scientific novelty of doctoral theses.•Quantified scientific novelty in doctoral theses by applying a pre-trained Bio-BERT model and using bio-entities as knowledge units.•Female students tend to produce doctoral theses with a lower level of scientific novelty than those authored by males.•In top-tier universities, gender disparities in the scientific novelty of doctoral theses are found to be less prominent.•Gender disparities in the scientific novelty of doctoral theses are less pronounced in the upper tails of the novelty score distribution.