Title:	THE DEMOGRAPHIC GAP IN CONFERENCE COMMITTEES
Author(s):	Omar Salman, Susan Gauch, Mohammed Alqahatani and Mohammed Ibrahim
ISBN:	978-989-8704-24-5
Editors:	Hans Weghorn
Year:	2020
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Demographic Bias, Researcher Modeling, Academic Conferences
Type:	Full
First Page:	46
Last Page:	52
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	In this study, we explore the demographic composition of conference program committees (PCs) in Computer Science by modeling the demographic profile of a researcher considering four distinct demographic features. In addition to the widely used gender and race, we also consider institution rank and geolocation to model demographic attributes of a researcher. We use this multi-dimensional profile to explore the demographic gap in the scientific community by analyzing the top two ACM conferences (ranked by impact factor). We tracked these conferences over a decade to analyze the makeup of their program committees to look for progress in closing the gap over time. Our analysis shows there is a slight improvement in terms of gender; however, there has been no diversity increase in ethnicity or institution rank. The results show that the percentage of PC members from developing countries is generally below 6%. We believe that this work highlights the importance of considering demographic features to achieve fair representation in scientific conferences in order to open the door for the development of new fair and diverse academic expertise recommendations.
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