ArticleCritical care (London, England)2025
Female first and senior authorship in high-impact critical care journals 2005-2024.
Article in Critical care (London, England), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Large language model-based evaluation of the impact of gender in medical research.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Factors associated with women authorship over 25 years in high-impact critical care randomized controlled trials: the pipeline is still leaking.Critical care (London, England) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundGender disparities persist in medical research. This study assessed gender representation trends in first and senior authorships in the five highest-ranked critical care journals (by impact factor) over a 20-year period.
methodsWe analyzed author gender distribution from 2005 to 2024. Author gender was determined using NamSor for web-based gender prediction. We assessed trends in female first, senior, and combined first and senior authorships by calculating percentages, and annual changes by linear regression for multiple and single author publications.
resultsAmong 42,970 articles, 34,743 had multiple authors and 8,227 had a single author. Despite progress over the past two decades, women remain underrepresented in critical care research leadership with 7.8% of publications having both female first and senior authors, compared to 56.7% with both positions held by men. Single authors were female in 23.6%. Linear regression showed increasing female authorships between - 0.1 and + 0.6% points per year depending on the journal, author position, and time period. Sensitivity analyses including only publications with more than 80% probability of correct gender classification yielded congruent results.
conclusionsDespite small but constant growth rates of female representation as first or senior authors in high impact critical care journals over the past 20 years, women remain clearly underrepresented. Given the current rate of change, it will take decades to achieve gender parity. The observed gender disparity in authorships likely reflects underlying gender inequities in critical care career trajectories, highlighting the need for institutional changes.
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Registered trials
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