Observational studyBMJ open2020
Quantifying gender disparity in physician authorship among commentary articles in three high-impact medical journals: an observational study.
Observational study in BMJ open, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Gender Disparities in Citations and Altmetric Attention Score in Oncology.JCO oncology practice · 2026Article
- Gender Differences in National Institutes of Health Funding for Family Medicine Faculty.Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine : JABFM · 2026Article
- Representation of women authorship in the top-cited articles published in the medical imaging literature.Insights into imaging · 2025Article
- Scientific publications that use promotional language in the abstract receive more citations and public attention.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- Does diversity beget diversity? A scientometric analysis of over 150,000 studies and 49,000 authors published in high-impact medical journals between 2007 and 2022.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Trends in Scientific Collaboration Between Men and Women Following the #MeToo Movement.Journal of general internal medicine · 2024Review
- Gender Disparity of First Authors in Review Article Publications Related to Schizophrenia.Cureus · 2023Review
- Diversity in high-impact psychiatric publishing: gender parity within reach?Archives of women's mental health · 2022Article
- Assessment of Implicit Gender Bias During Evaluation of Procedural Competency Among Emergency Medicine Residents.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- Women are underrepresented in major US sleep societies recognition awards.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2021Article
- Gender Disparity in Citations in High-Impact Journal Articles.JAMA network open · 2021Article
- Authorship diversity among systematic reviews in eyes and vision.Systematic reviews · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundScholarship plays a direct role in career advancement, promotion and authoritative recognition, and women physicians remain under-represented as authors of original research articles.
objectiveWe sought to determine if women physician authors are similarly under-represented in commentary articles within high-impact journals. DESIGN/SETTING/
participantsIn this observational study, we abstracted and analysed author information (gender and degree) and authorship position from commentary articles published in three high-impact journals between 1 January 2014 and 16 October 2018. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE: Authorship rate of commentary articles over a 5-year period by gender, degree, authorship position and journal. SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: To compare the proportion of men and women physician authorship of commentaries relative to the proportion of men and women physician faculty within academic medicine; and to examine the gender concordance among the last and first authors in articles with more than one author.
resultsOf the 2087 articles during the study period, 48% were men physician first authors compared with 17% women physician first authors (p<0.0001). Of the 1477 articles with more than one author, similar distributions were found with regard to last authors: 55% were men physicians compared with only 12% women physicians (p<0.0001). The proportion of women physician first authors increased over time; however, the proportion of women physician last authors remained stagnant. Women coauthored with women in the first and last authorship positions in 9% of articles. In contrast, women coauthored with men in the first and last author positions, respectively, in 55% of articles.
conclusionsWomen physician authors remain under-represented in commentary articles compared with men physician authors in the first and last author positions. Women also coauthored commentaries with other women in far fewer numbers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.