ArticleeLife2020
A 10-year follow-up study of sex inclusion in the biological sciences.
Article in eLife, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 176 papers, 9 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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
176 citing papers in PubMed, 9 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Clinical Practice Guideline on the Choice of First Antipsychotic Medicine for Females Experiencing a First-Episode of Psychosis.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2026Guideline
- Sex differences in antiseizure medications response in people with epilepsy: a systematic review.Journal of neurology · 2025Pooled it
- A preclinical systematic review and meta-analysis assessing the effect of biological sex in lipopolysaccharide-induced acute lung injury.American journal of physiology. Lung cellular and molecular physiology · 2024Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Multivariate Models of Animal Sex: Breaking Binaries Leads to a Better Understanding of Ecology and Evolution.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Pooled it
- Methods for Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback (HRVB): A Systematic Review and Guidelines.Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback · 2023Pooled it
- Deciphering the sex bias in housekeeping gene expression in adipose tissue: a comprehensive meta-analysis of transcriptomic studies.Biology of sex differences · 2023Pooled it
- Demographic reporting across a decade of neuroimaging: a systematic review.Brain imaging and behavior · 2022Pooled it
- Examination of Sex-Specific Participant Inclusion in Exercise Physiology Endothelial Function Research: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2022Pooled it
- Comparative study on pregnancy complications: PGT-A vs. IVF-ET with gender-specific outcomes.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2024Trial
- Claims of sex-dependent effects in the behavioral and brain sciences are infrequently supported by valid statistical comparisons.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Phasing out animal research prematurely will maintain gender inequities in medicine.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Review
- Twenty years of sex and gender science in health research: a policy statement from the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences.Biology of sex differences · 2026Review
- Peripheral inhibition of IL-6 signaling with tocilizumab improves stroke outcomes in aged mice but requires sex-specific dosing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Incorporation of the National Institute of Health (NIH) sex as a biological variable policy by R01 grant awardees.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Representation in science and trust in scientists in the USA.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- The "sex-specific effect:" Evaluating analytical approaches to sex-dependence in the behavioral and brain sciences.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- New approaches to meta-analyze differences in skewness, kurtosis, and correlation.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Stress Biology in Cancer: Neuroendocrine-Immune Mechanisms Linking Tumor Progression to Translational Interventions.Cancer communications (London, England) · 2026Review
116 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In 2016, to address the historical overrepresentation of male subjects in biomedical research, the US National Institutes of Health implemented a policy requiring investigators to consider sex as a biological variable. In order to assess the impact of this policy, we conducted a bibliometric analysis across nine biological disciplines for papers published in 34 journals in 2019, and compared our results with those of a similar study carried out by Beery and Zucker in 2009. There was a significant increase in the proportion of studies that included both sexes across all nine disciplines, but in eight of the disciplines there was no change in the proportion studies that included data analyzed by sex. The majority of studies failed to provide rationale for single-sex studies or the lack of sex-based analyses, and those that did relied on misconceptions surrounding the hormonal variability of females. Together, these data demonstrate that while sex-inclusive research practices are more commonplace, there are still gaps in analyses and reporting of data by sex in many biological disciplines.
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.