Bibliometric Analysis of Female Authorship Trends and Collaboration Dynamics Over JBMR's 30-Year History

Abstract

In academia, authorship is considered a currency, and is important for career advancement. As the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research (JBMR®) is the highest-ranked journal in the field of bone, muscle, and mineral metabolism, and is the official publication of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, we sought to examine authorship changes over JBMR®’s 30-year history. Two bibliometric methods were used to collect the data. The “decade method” included all published manuscripts throughout one year in each decade over the past 30 years starting with the inaugural year, yielding 746 manuscripts for analysis. The “random method” examined 10% of published manuscripts from each of the 30 years, yielding 652 manuscripts for analysis. Using both methods, the average number of authors per manuscript, numerical location of the corresponding author, number of collaborating institutions, number of collaborating countries, number of printed manuscript pages, and the number of times each manuscript was cited all significantly increased between 1986 and 2015 (p < 10−4). Using the decade method, there was a significant increase in the percentage of female first authors over time from 35.8% in 1986 to 47.7% in 2015 (p = 0.02) and this trend was confirmed using the random method. The highest percentage of female first authors in 2015 was in Europe (60.0%), and Europe also had the most dramatic increase in female first authors over time (more than double in 2015 compared with 1986). However, the overall number of female corresponding authors did not significantly change during the past 30 years. With the increasing demands of publishing in academic medicine, understanding changes in publishing characteristics over time and by geographical region is important. These findings highlight JBMR®’s authorship trends over the past 30 years, demonstrate those countries having the most changes, and where challenges still exist.

Authorship trends in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research: A bibliometric analysis

“…However, as shown by our study as well as others, a gender gap remains between women and men for first and senior authorship . Although our study does not explicitly demonstrate cause and effect, several important trends have been identified which may provide JOR® , ORS, and the orthopaedic field with strategies for further closing the gender gap.…”

“…If we examine the percentage point increase over time we see that for JOR® , there was a 29 point increase in female first authors (from 5% to 34%) and a 27 point increase in female corresponding authors (from 0% to 27%) from 1983 to 2015. JOR® has seen stronger improvements than all bone/orthopaedic journals for which similar data have been recently published . Examination of data from the mid 1980s to 2015 from the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research shows a 12 point and 17 point increase in female first and corresponding authors, Bone shows a 25 point and 14 point increase in female first and corresponding authors, Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics shows a 20 point and 12 point increase in female first and corresponding authors, Spine shows a 0.9 and −0.3 point increase in women first and corresponding authors, and Journal of Hand Surgery shows a 14 point increase in female first authors (corresponding author gender was not documented in that study) .…”

“…Data were collected in a manner similar to that described by other investigators . In brief, data were collected at 10‐year intervals working backwards from 2015, in addition to the 1983 inaugural year of JOR® .…”

Patterns of authorship in ecology and evolution: First, last, and corresponding authorship vary with gender and geography

“…Women were particularly underrepresented in the last author position, relative to their representation in the community and their representation at other author positions, in both of our datasets (22% and 23%). That women are especially poorly represented among last authors is typical for analyses of authorship in biology and medical journals (e.g., Dotson, 2011;Erren, Groß, Shaw, & Selle, 2014;Feramisco et al, 2009;Jagsi et al, 2006;Holman, Stuart-Fox, & Hauser, 2018;Kongkiatkamon et al, 2010;West et al, 2013;Wininger et al, 2017). This is likely due to demographic differences between individuals in the various author positions; for example, first authors are commonly students and postdocs, populations for which female representation is quite high in the sciences (Shaw & Stanton, 2012), whereas the last author is commonly the senior scientist for the project, such as the laboratory supervising professor or grant primary investigator (Duffy, 2017;Jagsi et al, 2006), populations in which women remain underrepresented.…”

A Bibliometric Study of Authorship and Collaboration Trends Over the Past 30 Years in Four Major Musculoskeletal Science Journals

“…The detailed data for three of the four journals (BONE®, JBMR®, and JOR®) has been previously published [17][18][19]; the reader is directed to those manuscripts for detailed results. That data is from the same group of researchers and senior authors as the CTI® data; thus, we were able to use the raw data for comparison purposes in this manuscript.…”