IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v121y2019i1d10.1007_s11192-019-03192-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A 50-year analysis of gender differences in United States authorship of original research articles in two major anesthesiology journals

Author

Listed:
  • Paul S. Pagel

    (The Clement J. Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center)

  • Julie K. Freed

    (The Medical College of Wisconsin)

  • Cynthia A. Lien

    (The Medical College of Wisconsin)

Abstract

Underrepresentation of women in academic medicine is strongly linked to differences in men’s and women’s scholarship and has been shown to substantially reduce the overall quality of research. An authorship “gender gap” exists in most medical specialties, but differences in research article authorship have only been recently suggested in anesthesiology. We analyzed authorship of US research articles published in Anesthesiology and Anesthesia and Analgesia (journals that publish two-thirds of all anesthesiology-related articles) from 1967 to 2017 to test the hypothesis that publication of anesthesiology research articles by women authors has progressively increased over time along with greater involvement in first, last, and corresponding author roles. Research articles appearing in Anesthesiology and Anesthesia and Analgesia in 1967, 1977, 1987, 1997, 2007, and 2017 were identified. The corresponding author was used to determine the country of origin of each article; only articles originating from the US were included in the analysis. Each author’s gender was determined by inspection of the first name and verified using the author’s institutional website or an internet search if necessary. First, last, and corresponding authors as well as co-authors were noted for each article. Federal grant support was also identified if present. Gender was identified in 98.2% of authors. A total of 1350 research articles with 6165 authors (1319 female; 21.4%) originated from the US. The percentage of women authors increased in a time-dependent manner in Anesthesiology from 6.2% in 1967 to 31.3% in 2017. The proportion of women who were first, last, and corresponding authors increased from 5.1%, 8.9%, and 2.5%, respectively, in 1967 to 37.0%, 22.2%, and 25.9% in 2017, respectively. The number of women co-authors per article also increased over time. Similar results were observed in Anesthesia and Analgesia. The percentage of articles that included at least one woman rose progressively over time in both journals (e.g., Anesthesiology, 12.6% in 1967 versus 90.7% in 2017). Articles published in Anesthesiology were more likely to be supported by a federal grant than those in Anesthesia and Analgesia. The percentage of women first authors of US research articles in Anesthesiology and Anesthesia and Analgesia increased from 1967 to 2017 and approaches the proportion who currently hold academic appointments. Women’s last and corresponding authorship also increased during the past 50 years, but women continue to be relatively underrepresented in these roles.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul S. Pagel & Julie K. Freed & Cynthia A. Lien, 2019. "A 50-year analysis of gender differences in United States authorship of original research articles in two major anesthesiology journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 371-386, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:121:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-019-03192-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-019-03192-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-019-03192-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-019-03192-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Teja Tscharntke & Michael E Hochberg & Tatyana A Rand & Vincent H Resh & Jochen Krauss, 2007. "Author Sequence and Credit for Contributions in Multiauthored Publications," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(1), pages 1-2, January.
    2. Jordi Duch & Xiao Han T Zeng & Marta Sales-Pardo & Filippo Radicchi & Shayna Otis & Teresa K Woodruff & Luís A Nunes Amaral, 2012. "The Possible Role of Resource Requirements and Academic Career-Choice Risk on Gender Differences in Publication Rate and Impact," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(12), pages 1-11, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shang, Yuanyuan & Sivertsen, Gunnar & Cao, Zhe & Zhang, Lin, 2021. "Gender differences in research focused on the Sustainable Development Goal of Gender Equality," SocArXiv 3fapz, Center for Open Science.
    2. Patricia E Salerno & Mónica Páez-Vacas & Juan M Guayasamin & Jennifer L Stynoski, 2019. "Male principal investigators (almost) don’t publish with women in ecology and zoology," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-14, June.
    3. M. Teresa Antonio-García & Irene López-Navarro & Jesús Rey-Rocha, 2014. "Determinants of success for biomedical researchers: a perception-based study in a health science research environment," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(3), pages 1747-1779, December.
    4. Ash Mohammad Abbas, 2011. "Weighted indices for evaluating the quality of research with multiple authorship," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(1), pages 107-131, July.
    5. Chaojiang Wu & Erjia Yan & Yongjun Zhu & Kai Li, 2021. "Gender imbalance in the productivity of funded projects: A study of the outputs of National Institutes of Health R01 grants," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(11), pages 1386-1399, November.
    6. Rodrigo Costas & María Bordons, 2011. "Do age and professional rank influence the order of authorship in scientific publications? Some evidence from a micro-level perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(1), pages 145-161, July.
    7. Toluwase Asubiaro, 2019. "How collaboration type, publication place, funding and author’s role affect citations received by publications from Africa: A bibliometric study of LIS research from 1996 to 2015," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1261-1287, September.
    8. Myrto-Panagiota Zacharof & Anna Charalambidou, 2018. "An Exploration of the Sub-Register of Chemical Engineering Research Papers Published in English," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-19, July.
    9. Zhai, Li & Yan, Xiangbin, 2022. "A directed collaboration network for exploring the order of scientific collaboration," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    10. Frandsen, Tove Faber & Jacobsen, Rasmus Højbjerg & Wallin, Johan A. & Brixen, Kim & Ousager, Jakob, 2015. "Gender differences in scientific performance: A bibliometric matching analysis of Danish health sciences Graduates," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 1007-1017.
    11. Christopher Zou & Jordan B. Peterson, 2016. "Quantifying the scientific output of new researchers using the zp-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(3), pages 901-916, March.
    12. Corrêa Jr., Edilson A. & Silva, Filipi N. & da F. Costa, Luciano & Amancio, Diego R., 2017. "Patterns of authors contribution in scientific manuscripts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 498-510.
    13. Mike Thelwall & Tamara Nevill, 2019. "No evidence of citation bias as a determinant of STEM gender disparities in US biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(3), pages 1793-1801, December.
    14. Zhang, Ming-Ze & Wang, Tang-Rong & Lyu, Peng-Hui & Chen, Qi-Mei & Li, Ze-Xia & Ngai, Eric W.T., 2024. "Impact of gender composition of academic teams on disruptive output," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2).
    15. Leclaire, Sébastien & Pellerin, Nicolas & Reggio, Marcelo & Trépanier, Jean-Yves, 2014. "Multiphase flow modeling of spinodal decomposition based on the cascaded lattice Boltzmann method," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 406(C), pages 307-319.
    16. Anna Tietze & Philip Hofmann, 2019. "The h-index and multi-author hm-index for individual researchers in condensed matter physics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(1), pages 171-185, April.
    17. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "Should the research performance of scientists be distinguished by gender?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 25-38.
    18. Kaur, Jasleen & Ferrara, Emilio & Menczer, Filippo & Flammini, Alessandro & Radicchi, Filippo, 2015. "Quality versus quantity in scientific impact," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 800-808.
    19. Vollmer, Frank & Zorrilla-Miras, Pedro & Baumert, Sophia & Luz, Ana Catarina & Woollen, Emily & Grundy, Isla & Artur, Luis & Ribeiro, Natasha & Mahamane, Mansour & Patenaude, Genevieve, 2017. "Charcoal income as a means to a valuable end: Scope and limitations of income from rural charcoal production to alleviate acute multidimensional poverty in Mabalane district, southern Mozambique," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 7, pages 43-60.
    20. Lisa Geraci & Steve Balsis & Alexander J. Busch Busch, 2015. "Gender and the h index in psychology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 2023-2034, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:121:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-019-03192-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.