Department of Anesthesiology, Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Can J Anaesth. 2019 May;66(5):495-502. doi: 10.1007/s12630-019-01328-5. Epub 2019 Feb 25.
Females remain under-represented in academic anesthesiology. Our objectives were to investigate gender differences over time in the first and last authors of published articles as well as corresponding citation rates in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia (CJA).
We conducted a cross-sectional, retrospective analysis of first and last authors' gender from editorials and original articles published in the CJA in a sample of one calendar year of each decade between 1954 to 2017. We analyzed the relationships between author gender, year of publication, article type, and number of citations.
Out of 639 articles identified, 542 (85%) were original investigations and 97 (15%) were editorials. Where gender could be confidently identified, the majority (461/571, 81%) of first authors were male. Although there was an increase in the proportion of female first authors over time, this increase was outpaced by the overall increase in female anesthesiologists in Canada. Original articles received more citations and were more likely to have a female first author than editorial articles were. An original article with a female first author resulted in 0.34 (95% confidence interval, 0.28 to 0.39; P < 0.001) more citations per article than a male first author when adjusting for year of publication.
Our study shows that, despite a slow increase over time, female authors are under-represented relative to male authors in the CJA and relative to the changing demographics of anesthesiologists in Canada. The reasons for this disparity are multifactorial and further research is needed to identify effective solutions.
女性在学术麻醉学领域的代表性仍然不足。我们的目的是研究发表文章的第一作者和最后作者的性别随时间的变化，并调查加拿大麻醉学杂志（CJA）中相应的引用率。
我们对 1954 年至 2017 年期间每个十年的一个日历年内 CJA 发表的社论和原始文章的第一作者和最后作者的性别进行了横断面、回顾性分析。我们分析了作者性别、出版年份、文章类型和引用次数之间的关系。
在确定的 639 篇文章中，542 篇（85%）为原始研究，97 篇（15%）为社论。可以明确确定性别的情况下，大多数（461/571，81%）第一作者为男性。尽管第一作者中女性的比例随着时间的推移有所增加，但这种增加速度落后于加拿大女性麻醉师人数的总体增加。原始文章的引用量更高，且更有可能有女性第一作者，而社论文章则不然。当调整出版年份时，具有女性第一作者的原始文章比具有男性第一作者的文章每篇多获得 0.34（95%置信区间，0.28 至 0.39；P<0.001）的引用次数。
我们的研究表明，尽管随着时间的推移缓慢增加，但与男性作者相比，女性作者在 CJA 中的代表性不足，与加拿大麻醉师的不断变化的人口统计学相比也是如此。这种差异的原因是多方面的，需要进一步研究以确定有效的解决方案。
