Delineating gender/sex‐related studies through bibliometric analysis

Abstract The multidisciplinary and socially grounded nature of Women's/Gender/Feminist Studies poses unique challenges for bibliometric analysis, as it extends beyond conventional disciplinary boundaries. This paper makes three key contributions: (1) We propose a novel retrieval method for constructing a corpus of scholarly documents in research areas that cannot be accurately identified through traditional field classifications. This method employs a core–periphery structure that integrates journals and keywords, leveraging bibliometric techniques, topic modeling, and manual curation. This methodology can be adapted to delineate other academic conversations. (2) We apply this approach to gender/sex‐related research using the Dimensions database, obtaining a corpus of 1.9 million scientific documents across four languages and openly sharing the DOIs to facilitate reuse by the research community. This dataset allows for a comprehensive characterization of Gender Studies in terms of research topics, citation and collaboration dynamics, and institutional and regional participation. (3) Finally, the results indicate that the core of Gender Studies emerged and institutionalized from the mid‐1970s across different disciplines, and the usage of key terms such as ‘gender’ or ‘sex’ varies across communities and time periods.