Ahmad Imad, Khan Najib U
Medicine, Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, CAN.
Internal Medicine, Medical Unit, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Karachi, PAK.
Cureus. 2020 Dec 2;12(12):e11850. doi: 10.7759/cureus.11850.
Medical academic research done in various specialties shows sex disparity in terms of academic and leadership rank. Research shows that in many medical academic research fields, there are a greater number of men with higher academic and leadership ranks, as well as higher research productivity. This begs the question: What is the case for medical academic research specifically in physiology departments throughout North America? Upon review of the literature, we found that a knowledge gap still exists in North America regarding sex differences among the faculty of physiology. Our rationale for this study is that if a sex disparity among the faculty of physiology in North American academia is found, steps can be taken to lower this disparity. The very first step is identifying that a problem exists. Scopus was used to obtain the h-index, years of active research, and the number of publications and citations of each faculty member. The h-index was used as a metric of academic output and scholarly productivity. Univariate regression was run with the h-index as the outcome of interest and multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine factors associated with a higher h-index. The analysis showed that while the overall number of females holding academic positions in physiology departments throughout North America has increased over the years, a large sex disparity still exists between males and females in the field. This disparity exists not only in academic and leadership rank but also in research productivity, a key predictor of success in the field. This finding warrants that further work be done to find what is causing this disparity and how it can be addressed.
各专业开展的医学学术研究表明,在学术和领导职级方面存在性别差异。研究显示,在许多医学学术研究领域,具有较高学术和领导职级以及较高研究产出率的男性数量更多。这就引出了一个问题:北美各地生理系的医学学术研究情况如何呢?在查阅文献时,我们发现北美在生理学教员的性别差异方面仍存在知识空白。我们开展这项研究的理由是,如果发现北美学术界生理系教员存在性别差异,就可以采取措施来缩小这种差异。第一步就是要确定存在问题。我们使用Scopus获取了每位教员的h指数、活跃研究年限、发表论文数量和被引用次数。h指数被用作学术产出和学术生产力的衡量指标。以h指数作为感兴趣的结果进行单变量回归,并使用多元线性回归分析来确定与较高h指数相关的因素。分析表明,虽然多年来北美各地生理系担任学术职位的女性总数有所增加,但该领域男性和女性之间仍然存在很大的性别差异。这种差异不仅存在于学术和领导职级方面,还存在于研究产出率方面,而研究产出率是该领域成功的关键预测指标。这一发现表明需要进一步开展工作,以找出造成这种差异的原因以及如何解决这一问题。