Understanding Gender Equity in Author Order Assignment

Women remain underrepresented in many fields in computer science, particularly at higher levels. In academia, success and promotion are influenced by a researcher's publication record. In many fields, including computer science, multi-author papers are the norm. Evidence from other fields shows that author order norms can influence the assignment of credit. We conduct interviews of students and faculty in human-computer interaction (HCI) and machine learning (ML) to determine factors related to assignment of author order in collaborative publication. The outcomes of these interviews then informed metrics of interest for a bibliometric analysis of gender and collaboration in research papers published from 1996 to 2016 in three top HCI and ML conferences. Based on our findings, we make recommendations for assignment of credit in multi-author papers and interpretation of author order, particularly in regard to how this area affects women.