Strategic roles of female scholars in steering transportation research agendas

In recent years, female scientists have contributed to advancements in the transportation sector through technological innovation and unique perspectives, playing pivotal roles across various domains of the field. This study analyzes 54,511 publications from 20 Science Citation Index (SCI) Q1 transportation journals (2014–2024), encompassing over 100,000 scholars, to advance the understanding of the status of female scientists in transportation academia. Female authors constitute only 22.91% of first authors and 20.86% of corresponding authors, revealing persistent underrepresentation despite incremental progress in mixed-gender collaborations. This study uses a mixed-methods framework that includes data mining, the mean normalized log-transformed citation score (MNLCS), probabilistic gender identification, keyword co-occurrence, and clustering analysis to investigate macrolevel trends and longitudinally compare four collaboration modes. The key findings include that (1) mixed-gender teams exhibit significant growth, with MNLCS exceeding single-gender teams by 0.048–0.067, and (2) female-led collaborations exhibit a stronger tendency to drive sustained exploration in research fields. These findings support gender-equality policies and guide early-career scholars in collaboration strategies and frontier tracking, promoting inclusive development in transportation research.