A Decade of Global Skull Base Researchers: Gender Data from over 2,700 Abstract Authors in the Journal of Neurological Surgery Part B: Skull Base

Abstract

Objective: The North American Skull Base Society (NASBS) annual conference brings together skull base researchers from surgical and non-surgical fields. Our objective was to quantify the contributions of the authors by gender, who presented their work at NASBS and were subsequently published in the Journal of Neurological Surgery Part B: Skull Base. Methods: Oral and poster abstracts presented at the NASBS annual meeting from 01-01-2011 to 12-31-2020 were extracted from the Journal of Neurological Surgery Part B: Skull Base. The genderize.io web application programming interface (API) was utilized to determine authorship gender. A minority of first and last authors had departmental affiliations listed; a subgroup analysis was performed of these authors. Results: Female gender was assigned to 498 (17.8%) of the 2798 first authors and 269 (9.7%) of the 2762 last authors. Female authorship has consistently increased over the last decade. Representation was higher in otolaryngology (23.3% of first authors, 12.1% of last authors; p = 0.018) than neurosurgery (13.5% of first authors, 4.3% of last authors; p = 0.004). Female researchers were not less likely than their male counterparts to receive prestigious oral presentations. Of the 52 total countries represented, 20 (38.5%) had at least one female first author. Representation varied dramatically between countries. Conclusions: The NASBS’ efforts have undoubtedly contributed to these impressive strides toward gender parity. More work is needed to ensure that the best and the brightest, regardless of background, continue to contribute to skull base surgery research.

The Evolution of Skull Base Surgery: A Bibliometric Analysis Spanning Nearly 125 Years

“…Our analysis sheds light on the evolving role of female authors within this corpus, highlighting a significant increase in their participation in recent years and confirming trends observed by others. 42 43 These data align with broader efforts to enhance diversity and inclusion within the skull base community, as evidenced by dedicated symposia at recent NASBS meetings focusing on women in skull base surgery, 44 45 and are a testament to the evolving demographic landscape and the gradual breaking down of historical gender barriers in surgical subspecialties.…”

A Decade of Global Skull Base Researchers: Authorship Trends from 3,295 Abstracts in the Journal of Neurological Surgery Part B: Skull Base

“…Because we believe achieving diversity among skull base researchers is a necessary condition to further the field, we also share our dedicated analysis of the role of gender at the NASBS annual meeting, cited here. 16 Particularly in the wake of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, we have seen an emergence of virtual conferences. We, therefore, wonder whether virtual conferences have had any impact on representation by researchers around the world.…”

“…15 Previous analysis of this meeting studied gender distribution, which we have further examined in an accompanying article. 16 However, we remained curious about additional characteristics of researchers contributing to the skull base literature. Considering the recent successes of the global surgery movement as well as the growth of ethnic and gender minorities represented in surgical subspecialties, [17][18][19][20][21] we believe that there is much to learn via the study of characteristics of authors that had their abstracts accepted to NASBS.…”