ArticleeLife2020
COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected.
Article in eLife, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 151 papers, 3 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
151 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Challenges in Feeding Children Posed by the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Systematic Review of Changes in Dietary Intake Combined with a Dietitian's Perspective.Current nutrition reports · 2021Pooled it
- Sex Differences in Academic Productivity Across Academic Ranks and Specialties in Academic Medicine: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.JAMA network open · 2021Pooled it
- A Systematic Review and Bibliometric Analysis of the Scientific Literature on the Early Phase of COVID-19 in Italy.Frontiers in public health · 2021Pooled it
- Gender-specific Differences in Radiation Oncology Training during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Subanalysis.Journal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education · 2026Article
- The illusion of meritocracy: addressing systemic gender gaps in bioinformatics.Frontiers in bioinformatics · 2026Article
- The Impact of COVID-19 on the Division of Household Labor Among Women Physicians and Advanced Practice Providers.Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Article
- Can State Family Support Policies Level the Playing Field for Early-Career Women in Plastic Surgery? An Analysis of Web-Scraped Data.Aesthetic plastic surgery · 2025Article
- Evaluating Covid-19 publications for sex and gender-specific health content: A bibliometric analysis.PloS one · 2025Article
- Building Up a Biomedical Research Workforce Trial.Journal of clinical and translational science · 2025Article
- Gender Representation in Authorship of Academic Dermatology Publications During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-Sectional Study.JMIR dermatology · 2024Article
- COVID-19 and stroke in women: impact on clinical, psychosocial and research aspects.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2024Review
- Article
- COVID-19 Research Delays Disproportionately Affected Pediatrician-Scientists from Backgrounds Under-Represented in Medicine.The Journal of pediatrics · 2024Article
- Mind the Gap! Working Toward Gender Equity in Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease: Present and Future.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2024Review
- Evaluation of Culture Conducive to Academic Success by Gender at a Comprehensive Cancer Center.The oncologist · 2024Article
- Re-evaluating the gender gap: a cross-sectional analysis of accepted American Academy of Neurology annual meeting abstracts in 2020 and 2021.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2024Article
- Intersectionality and COVID-19: Academic Medicine Faculty's Lived Experiences of Well-Being, Workload, and Productivity During the Pandemic.Journal of women's health (2002) · 2023Article
- Gender parity in high impact neurology journals.eNeurologicalSci · 2023Article
- Exploring the Impact of COVID-19 on Women Hospitalists: A Mixed-Gender Qualitative Analysis.Journal of general internal medicine · 2023Article
- Gender Disparities in First Authorship at Three Medical Universities in an Area Affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.The Kobe journal of medical sciences · 2023Observational
91 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in school closures and distancing requirements that have disrupted both work and family life for many. Concerns exist that these disruptions caused by the pandemic may not have influenced men and women researchers equally. Many medical journals have published papers on the pandemic, which were generated by researchers facing the challenges of these disruptions. Here we report the results of an analysis that compared the gender distribution of authors on 1893 medical papers related to the pandemic with that on papers published in the same journals in 2019, for papers with first authors and last authors from the United States. Using mixed-effects regression models, we estimated that the proportion of COVID-19 papers with a woman first author was 19% lower than that for papers published in the same journals in 2019, while our comparisons for last authors and overall proportion of women authors per paper were inconclusive. A closer examination suggested that women's representation as first authors of COVID-19 research was particularly low for papers published in March and April 2020. Our findings are consistent with the idea that the research productivity of women, especially early-career women, has been affected more than the research productivity of men.
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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.