ObjectivesWomen remain underrepresented on faculties of medicine and the life sciences more broadly. Whether gender differences in self presentation of clinical research exist and may contribute to this gender gap has been challenging to explore empirically. The objective of this study was to analyze whether men and women differ in how positively they frame their research findings and to analyze whether the positive framing of research is associated with higher downstream citations.DesignRetrospective observational study.Data sourcesTitles and abstracts from 101 720 clinical research articles and approximately 6.2 million general life science articles indexed in PubMed and published between 2002 and 2017.Main outcome measuresAnalysis of article titles and abstracts to determine whether men and women differ in how positively they present their research through use of terms such as “novel” or “excellent.” For a set of 25 positive terms, we estimated the relative probability of positive framing as a function of the gender composition of the first and last authors, adjusting for scientific journal, year of publication, journal impact, and scientific field.ResultsArticles in which both the first and last author were women used at least one of the 25 positive terms in 10.9% of titles or abstracts versus 12.2% for articles involving a male first or last author, corresponding to a 12.3% relative difference (95% CI 5.7% to 18.9%). Gender differences in positive presentation were greatest in high impact clinical journals (impact factor >10), in which women were 21.4% less likely to present research positively. Across all clinical journals, positive presentation was associated with 9.4% (6.6% to 12.2%) higher subsequent citations, and in high impact clinical journals 13.0% (9.5% to 16.5%) higher citations. Results were similar when broadened to general life science articles published in journals indexed by PubMed, suggesting that gender differences in positive word use generalize to broader samples.ConclusionsClinical articles involving a male first or last author were more likely to present research findings positively in titles and abstracts compared with articles in which both the first and last author were women, particularly in the highest impact journals. Positive presentation of research findings was associated with higher downstream citations.

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ObjectiveConcerns have been raised that the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted research productivity to the disadvantage of women in academia, particularly in early career stages. In this study, we aimed to assess the pandemic’s effect on women’s COVID-19-related publishing over the first year of the pandemic.Methods and resultsWe compared the gender distribution of first authorships for 42 898 publications on COVID-19 from 1 February 2020 to 31 January 2021 to 483 232 publications appearing in the same journals during the same period the year prior. We found that the gender gap—the percentage of articles on which men versus women were first authors—widened by 14 percentage points during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite many pertinent research fields showing near equal proportions of men and women first authors publishing in the same fields before the pandemic. Longitudinal analyses revealed that the significant initial expansions of the gender gap began to trend backwards to expected values over time in many fields. As women may have been differentially affected depending on their geography, we also assessed the gender distribution of first authorships grouped by countries and geographical areas. While we observed a significant reduction of the shares of women first authors in almost all countries, longitudinal analyses confirmed a resolving trend over time.ConclusionThe reduction in women’s COVID-19-related research output appears particularly concerning as many disciplines informing the response to the pandemic had near equal gender shares of first authorship in the year prior to the pandemic. The acute productivity drain with the onset of the pandemic magnifies deep-rooted obstacles on the way to gender equity in scientific contribution.