  There are known gender imbalances in participation in scientific fields, from
female dominance of nursing to male dominance of mathematics. It is not clear
whether there is also a citation imbalance, with some claiming that
male-authored research tends to be more cited. No previous study has assessed
gender differences in the readers of academic research on a large scale,
however. In response, this article assesses whether there are gender
differences in the average citations and/or Mendeley readers of academic
publications. Field normalised logged Scopus citations and Mendeley readers
from mid-2018 for articles published in 2014 were investigated for articles
with first authors from India, Spain, Turkey, the UK and the USA in up to 251
fields with at least 50 male and female authors. Although female-authored
research is less cited in Turkey (-4.0%) and India (-3.6%), it is marginally
more cited in Spain (0.4%), the UK (0.4%), and the USA (0.2%). Female-authored
research has fewer Mendeley readers in India (-1.1%) but more in Spain (1.4%),
Turkey (1.1%), the UK (2.7%) and the USA (3.0%). Thus, whilst there may be
little practical gender difference in citation impact in countries with mature
science systems, the higher female readership impact suggests a wider audience
for female-authored research. The results show that the conclusions from a
gender analysis depend on the field normalisation method. A theoretically
informed decision must therefore be made about which normalisation to use. The
results also suggest that arithmetic mean-based field normalisation is
favourable to males.
