Sex Disparities in Authorship Order of Cardiology Scientific Publications

Abstract

Background: Despite advances in the representation of women in medical training, women continue to be underrepresented in cardiology, academic medicine, and more specifically, in senior positions within academic medicine. Identifying disparities in research productivity and acknowledgment can highlight barriers to female representation in academic cardiology leadership, as well as in academic promotion. Methods and Results: This bibliometric analysis included all authors of original research articles between 1980 and 2017 from 3 high-impact cardiology journals ( Journal of the American College of Cardiology , Circulation , and European Heart Journal ). We identified 71 345 unique authors of 55 085 primary research articles during our study period. Female authors accounted for 33.1% of all authors; however, they represented only 26.7% of first authors and 19.7% of senior authors. Looking at the most prolific authors within this time period, female authors were not well represented, accounting for only 5% of the top 100 authors. Articles with a female senior author had more female middle authors than articles with a male senior author (mean 1.41 versus 0.97, P <0.001) and were more likely to have a female first author (0.37 versus 0.18, P <0.001). There was an increased representation of female authors as first and senior authors compared with the total number of articles with female authors over time ( P <0.001 for trend); however, female senior authorship rates continued to lag first authorship rates. Conclusions: Using a large database of published manuscripts, we found that female representation in published cardiology research has increased over the past 4 decades. However, women continue to be not well represented as first authors, senior authors, and in the number of publications. When women were senior authors, they published more articles with female first authors and had more female authors. In addition to recruiting more women into the field of cardiology, additional work is needed to identify and address barriers to academic advancement for female physician-scientists.

Autoría femenina en la Revista Peruana de Medicina Experimental y Salud Pública: análisis del periodo 1997-2017

“…Esta investigación tampoco halló una tendencia en el tiempo para la primera autoría o corresponsalía femenina (21) . Estos hallazgos no son consistentes con el incremento global de la participación femenina en las publicaciones académicas (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) . Sin embargo, en algunos estudios se ha encontrado una desaceleración del incremento o incluso un efecto meseta al alcanzar cierta proporción de primeras autoras o autoras corresponsales (10,11,13,14) .…”

“…Las distintas formas de participación femenina en la autoría fueron consideradas como: a) Primera autoría femenina, si el primer autor listado es una mujer; b) autoría senior femenina, si el último autor listado es una mujer (8,9,(11)(12)(13)16,17) ; c) autor corresponsal mujer, si el autor corresponsal -en el que se indique dirección o correo electrónicoes una mujer; d) existencia de al menos una mujer dentro de la lista de autores de la publicación; y e) proporción de autores mujeres (calculado dividiendo el número de autoras entre el número total de autores de la publicación). En las publicaciones con una única autora, se consideró que una mujer cumplía el rol de «primer autor», «autor senior» y «autor corresponsal» simultáneamente.…”

“…Sin embargo, estudios internacionales en diversas áreas del conocimiento biomédico han mostrado que esta ha aumentado con el tiempo (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) . Sin embargo, aún existe una baja representación de mujeres en el rol de primer autor, así como de «autor senior», en el que la brecha es aún mayor (el autor senior es tradicionalmente el miembro más experimentado o jefe del equipo de investigación y es listado como último autor) (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(16)(17) . Además, algunos estudios sugieren que el incremento de la proporción de mujeres en estos roles de autoría ha alcanzado una meseta en los últimos 10 a 15 años (10,11,13,14) .…”

An Experimental Test of the Effects of Redacting Grant Applicant Identifiers on Peer Review Outcomes

“…The possibility of systematic bias in peer review of grant applications is of great concern to both applicants and funding agencies [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Disparities in success rates of scientific publishing [8][9][10] and in obtaining grant awards [11][12][13] raise questions of whether reviewer bias based on applicant demographics (race, gender, age, career stage, etc.) or institutional reputation unfairly influence the review outcomes which shape funding and publication decisions [14][15][16].…”

Research and Publication in Brazil: Where we are and Where we Head to

“…The authors concluded that the female representation in published cardiology research has increased over the past 4 decades, but women continue to be underrepresented when considering the total number of female researchers. 7 The study analyzing citations from 2379 articles from the top 20 impact cardiology journals from the Entrez database on PubMed, in 2017, has reported that less than one third of the publications of single authors had a female authorship. Of the publications with multiple authors, only 15% of the corresponding authors were women.…”