Gender Disparities in Cardiology-Related COVID-19 Publications

Abstract

Introduction: Female authors are underrepresented in cardiology journals, although prior work suggested improvement in reducing disparities over time. Early in the recent COVID-19 pandemic, female authorship continued to lag that of their male counterparts despite a surge in publications. The cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on authorship gender disparities remains unclear. We aimed to characterize gender disparities in COVID-19-related cardiology publications across the duration of the ongoing pandemic. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed COVID-19-related research articles published in the top 20 impact factor cardiology journals between March and June 2021. Gender representation data were extracted for any author, first authors, and senior authors.Results: We found that 841 articles were related to COVID-19, with a total of 5586 authors and an average of 42 articles per journal. Less than a third (29.9%) of the total authors from publications were women. Women represented a smaller proportion of first authors (21.3%) and senior authors (16.4%). Conclusions: Female authorship has continued to lag male authorship for the duration of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic may have impeded progress in reducing gender disparities in academic cardiology publications. The low proportions of first and senior female authors may reflect the impact of the pandemic on women in cardiology in leadership domains.

Gender-specific effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on scientific publishing productivity: Impact and resilience

“…Studies of fully peer-reviewed accepted and published articles have, to date, been smaller and restricted to specific journals or groups of journals within a particular field. Five of these articles purporting to investigate gender discrepancies in publishing within the pandemic offer no year comparator to relate their data specifically to this time frame ( Bittante et al, 2020 ; Vasti et al, 2021 ; Pinho-Gomes et al, 2020 ; Misra et al, 2021 ; Mazzalai et al, 2022 ). These articles do reinforce the understanding that women publish fewer papers than men across medical research but allow limited interpretation of the impact of COVID-19.…”

Academic Productivity of Equity-Deserving Physician Scholars During COVID-19: A Scoping Review

“…Of the 16 bibliometric publications that included an analysis of COVID-19 related papers, 11 reported that men were disproportionately represented as authors of COVID-19 papers. 39,42,46,53,57,58,62,63,67,71,74 There was some variation depending on authorship position; for instance, 2 papers that reported a significant difference in the proportion of women first authors did not report the same effect for last authors. 39,57 For example, Andersen et al 39 compared a sample of 1,893 COVID-19 papers published in medical journals between January and June 2020 with a sample of 85,373 papers published during 2019 in the same journals.…”

“…Of the 44 articles selected for extraction, 22 (50%) focused on academic medicine in general rather than on a specific medical area 26,39,43,44,46,50,52–54,56–60,63,68,70,71,75,78–80 ; the remaining publications focused on cardiology (n = 4, 9%), 42,69,72,74 radiology (n = 4, 9%), 61,64,66,73 emergency medicine (n = 2, 5%), 41,55 hematology or transfusion medicine (2, 5%), 40,47 ophthalmology (n = 2, 5%), 48,62 oncology (n = 2, 5%), 45,49 psychiatry (n = 1, 3%), 67 obstetrics and gynecology (n = 1, 3%), 81 osteopathic medicine (n = 1, 3%), 77 pediatrics (n = 1, 3%), 76 surgery (n = 1, 3%), 51 and urology (n = 1, 3%). 65 Articles were divided into 2 broad categories: nonempirical articles that did not collect or analyze primary or secondary data (n = 15, 34%) 26,48–50,54,59,60,68–70,72,73,77,79,80 and empirical articles that collected and/or analyzed data (n = 29; 66%).…”

“…56,63,66 Also, some articles highlighted that women may be more likely than men to agree to perform additional service-related or other unpromotable tasks, further reducing their time to engage in publishing and grant writing. 46,67,71,74 One article described how, by increasing school and childcare responsibilities, COVID-19 increased rates of compassion fatigue, burnout, workplace sexual harassment, and imposter syndrome for women physicians, while also limiting opportunities for advancement. 59…”

“…After the removal of 3,301 duplicates, we screened the remaining 8,286 papers, advancing 142 to full-text review. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 44 of the 142 articles were selected for extraction 26,39–81 Figure 1 provides a diagram outlining the PRISMA results flowchart.…”