Long-Term Analysis of Sex Differences in Prestigious Authorships in Cardiovascular Research Supported by the National Institutes of Health
2018; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 137; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1161/circulationaha.117.032325
ISSN1524-4539
AutoresCarolin Lerchenmüller, Marc Lerchenmueller, Olav Sorenson,
Tópico(s)Healthcare cost, quality, practices
ResumoHomeCirculationVol. 137, No. 8Long-Term Analysis of Sex Differences in Prestigious Authorships in Cardiovascular Research Supported by the National Institutes of Health Free AccessLetterPDF/EPUBAboutView PDFView EPUBSections ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload citationsTrack citationsPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InMendeleyReddit Jump toFree AccessLetterPDF/EPUBLong-Term Analysis of Sex Differences in Prestigious Authorships in Cardiovascular Research Supported by the National Institutes of Health Carolin Lerchenmüller, MD, Marc J. Lerchenmueller, PhD, MPH and Olav Sorenson, PhD Carolin LerchenmüllerCarolin Lerchenmüller Cardiovascular Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston (C.L.) Department of Cardiology, Angiology and Pulmonology, University Hospital Heidelberg, Germany (C.L.) , Marc J. LerchenmuellerMarc J. Lerchenmueller Department of Cardiology, Angiology and Pulmonology, University Hospital Heidelberg, Germany (C.L.) and Olav SorensonOlav Sorenson Yale University, School of Management, New Haven, CT (M.J.L., O.S.). Originally published20 Feb 2018https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.117.032325Circulation. 2018;137:880–882Women remain underrepresented on faculties of medicine. Among cardiologists with faculty appointments, for example, only ≈17% are women, and advancement into senior roles seems particularly challenging.1 Differences in the credit that women receive relative to men as prestigious first and last authors for research done by a group may contribute to this gender gap. Previous studies of sex differences in authorship of medical research found women underrepresented in both first and last author positions across subfields, although their share of prestigious authorships has appeared to improve over time.2,3 Yet, the use of hand-collected data from small sets of journals for a sample of years may not provide a representative picture. Moreover, simple counts of prestigious authorships may paint a distorted picture. On the one hand, the number of women participating in academic medicine has risen over time, creating more opportunities for prestigious authorships today than 30 years ago and, in some subfields, relatively more in comparison with others. On the other hand, women still represent the minority of scientists and reportedly have fewer publications than men, reducing their opportunities for prestigious authorships.In this study, we analyzed whether sex differences existed in prestigious authorships on 12 018 National Institutes of Health R01–supported cardiovascular research articles listed in PubMed that appeared across 107 cardiology journals between 1985 and 2015. We also extended our investigation to include 600 747 medical research articles listed in PubMed that appeared across 3849 journals during that time to compare cardiovascular research with medical research in general. The methodology for creating these data sets, connecting PubMed and National Institutes of Health funding data, has been documented elsewhere.4 We analyzed articles with at least 3 authors, because articles with fewer authors commonly fall outside the realm of original research (eg, editorials). To determine the sex of authors, we called the Genderize database that assigns a gender probability to first names based on verified public records. Applying a 90% probability threshold, we designated the sex of about three-quarters of the 3.7 million authorships in our sample (results remained robust for different thresholds and are available from the link provided in Article Information).To account for changing opportunities for authorship, we adopted a metric that relates the number of prestigious authorships to the number of all authorships.5 For last authorship rates, we divided the number of last authorships by all authorships, separately for men (rmL) and women (rfL). For respective first authorship rates (rmF;rfF), we divided the number of first authorships by all except last authorships because last authors would generally not defer their position for first authorship. These sex-specific rates still depend, in part, on the overall numbers of authors on the average article. To adjust for this fact and to provide a comparison of the probability that a woman earns prestigious authorships relative to a man, our calculations focused on the relative risks (RRs): RRfirst=rfF/rmF and RRlast=rfL/rmL. When these RRs exceed 1, women earned prestigious authorships at higher rates than men; when 10 represents the top 5 ranked field journals; 3.5 < JIF ≤ 10 represents field journals ranked 6 to 30; 3.5 ≤ JIF with remaining field journals up to rank 107. D, RRs for life science research by publishing journals' 5-year impact factor tiers. The dashed horizontal lines mark the point of equal gender probabilities of prestigious authorship. JIFs are based on the 2015 Journal Citation Report (Thomson Reuters). 95% confidence intervals not shown were smaller than the symbol of point estimate. JIF indicates journal impact factor; and RR, relative risk.Because the prominence of the journals likely influences how publishing translates into career progress, thereby potentially contributing to the fact that first authorships do not appear to translate into future last authorships for women, we analyzed whether sex differences in the RR varied with journal impact factor strata. In cardiovascular research, women's higher average RR of first authorship stemmed from their rate of first authorships in the lowest impact journals (Figure C, RR, 1.05; 95% CI, 1.00–1.11), whereas the RR of last authorship appeared unrelated to journal impact factor strata (Figure C). In the journals with the highest journal impact factors, women had significantly lower rates of first authorship than men (Figure C, RR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.81–0.94). Similar patterns in the RRs of both first and last authorships exist across the life sciences (Figure D).Our study analyzes the most comprehensive data set used to date. Still, our approach is necessarily limited to men and women who participate as authors in academic medical research. However, our results remained robust to modified RR measures and different sampling approaches (please see link provided in Article Information).In conclusion, our study provides evidence that, whereas women have become overall more likely to earn first author positions in cardiovascular research and across the life sciences, this advantage exists mostly for publications in less influential journals. These first authorships, moreover, appear to not translate into last authorships a few years later; the senior author gender gap has remained large and stable. Future research should thus examine why this transition falters.Carolin Lerchenmüller, MD*Marc J. Lerchenmueller, PhD, MPH*Olav Sorenson, PhD*AcknowledgmentsThe authors thank Anthony Rosenzweig, MD, and Laura Liu, PhD for helpful suggestions on prior drafts of this article.Sources of FundingDrs Lerchenmueller and Sorenson received financial support from the Initiative on Leadership and Organization at the Yale School of Management. Drs Lerchenmueller and Lerchenmüller also received support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) (LE 3426/ 1-1 to Dr Lerchenmueller, LE 3257/1-1 to Dr Lerchenmüller). Funding was also received from the Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg via the Olympia Morata Programme (Dr Lerchenmüller).DisclosuresNone.Footnotes*Authors listed alphabetically.http://circ.ahajournals.orgThe data and analytic methods will be available to other researchers for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure from Harvard Dataverse at http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RGK5E1.Carolin Lerchenmüller, MD, 185 Cambridge Street, Boston, MA 02114. 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