ArticleCommunications medicine2023
A bibliometric analysis of the gender gap in the authorship of leading medical journals.
Article in Communications medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 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
17 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Conflicts of Interest, Funding Support, and Author Affiliation in Peer-Reviewed Research on the Relationship between Climate Change and Geophysical Characteristics of Hurricanes.Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · 2026Article
- Women in anaesthesia research: Onwards and upwards.Indian journal of anaesthesia · 2026Article
- Individual and institutional factors linked to high research productivity among physicians in the Arab Gulf region: implications for healthcare policy.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Empowering resilience: celebrating and accelerating women's transformative contributions to plant abiotic stress research (2010-2025).Frontiers in plant science · 2026Review
- Motivation and determinants of research careers among physicians: Exploring pros and cons of the Dutch MD-PhD model.PloS one · 2026Article
- A bibliometric study on mathematical oncology: interdisciplinarity, internationality, collaboration and trending topics.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2025Article
- Examining gender and ethnic disparities in scientific authorship to promote a culture of equity, diversity and inclusion at a university school of public health.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A decade of vertebrate palaeontology research: global taxa distribution, gender dynamics and evolving methodologies.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Tips for quality publishing; lessons from the neuroscience editorial team.Neuroscience · 2025Article
- A decade of publication trends in the Mountain West Clinical and Translational Research Infrastructure Network.Journal of translational science · 2025Article
- A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis: Celebrating the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing.Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing. Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing · 2025Article
- Editorial: Women in oral health promotion.Frontiers in oral health · 2024Article
- Editorial: In celebration of women in developmental epigenetics.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2024Article
- Exploring gender differences in Physiotherapy research in Italy: a cross-sectional analysis.Archives of physiotherapyArticle
- Outcomes of Foundational Learning in Research Methods Following Primary Medical Qualification on Surgical Research: A Retrospective Review.ANZ journal of surgeryArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMonitoring gender representation is critical to achieve diversity and equity in academia. One way to evaluate gender representation in academia is to examine the authorship of research publications. This study sought to determine the gender of first and senior authors of articles in leading medical journals and assess trends in the gender gap over time.
methodsWe gather bibliometric data on original research articles (n = 10,558) published in 2010-2019 in five leading medical journals to audit publication and citation frequency by gender. We explored their association with scientific fields, geographical regions, journals, and collaboration scope.
resultsWe show that there are fewer women as senior (24.8%) than leading authors (34.5%, p < 0.001). The proportion of women varied by country with 9.1% last authors from Austria, 0.9% from Japan, and 0.0% from South Korea. The gender gap decreased longitudinally and faster for the last (-24.0 articles/year, p < 0.001) than first authors (-14.5 articles/year, p = 0.024) with pronounced country-specific variability. We also demonstrate that usage of research keywords varied by gender, partly accounting for the difference in citation counts.
conclusionsIn summary, gender representation has increased, although with country-specific variability. The study frame can be easily applied to any journal and time period to monitor changes in gender representation in science.
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.