Can the presence of an author photograph and biography have an impact on article citations? The case of chemistry and chemical engineering

Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate whether the presence of an author photograph and biography in scientific articles could have an impact on article citations. The impact of a photograph and biography, in combination with certain author characteristics (i.e., gender, affiliation country (measured as whether the author was affiliated with a high-income country or not), and scientific impact (measured as whether the author was a high-impact author or not)), was also examined, while controlling for several covariates. This study focused on a sample of articles published in the time span of 2016–2018 in chemistry and chemical engineering journals by Elsevier. The articles were downloaded from Scopus. The analysis was done using random effects within-between model analyses. Within authors, the results showed no significant impact of author photograph and biography on citations. Different patterns were found for visibility of articles when the presence of an author photograph and biography was combined with author characteristics. While being affiliated to a high-income country and being a high-impact author had a positive impact on citations, gender (female) had a negative impact. For gender, there was a small citation disadvantage of 5% for female authors when they provided a photograph and biography.