Medicine Institute, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio.
Head and Neck Institute, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio.
JAMA Netw Open. 2021 Apr 1;4(4):e212252. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.2252.
Gender disparity exists among authors of the oncology literature.
To quantify trends in authorship by gender within a comprehensive data set of Medline-indexed oncology articles in medical journals with high impact factors.
DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This cross-sectional study used Medline citations to examine archives of research journals from 3 disciplines in the oncology literature. Authors from all oncology-related articles with Medical Subject Headings terms assigned from 2002 to 2018 from 13 general oncology/medicine, radiation oncology, and surgical journals were included for analysis, encompassing clinical trials, observational studies (excluding case reports), reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and all other published articles. Data were analyzed between April and May 2020.
Authors were assigned genders based on societal naming norms via third-party gender identification service Gender-API.com. This assignment was internally validated based on manually obtained publicly available data on the internet.
Trend in female authorship over time while considering journal type, authorship position, and article type.
A total of 420 526 authors from 58 368 articles were found, of which 400 945 were assigned a gender based on their name. In total, 29.5% (95% CI, 29.4%-29.6%) of authors were identified as female, rising from 25.5% (95% CI, 24.7%-26.3%) in 2002 to 31.7% (95% CI, 31.2%-32.3%) in 2018. Each subgroup of primary article type by journal type saw a rise in female authorship over the studied period. For primary articles, last authors were less likely to be women than first authors, regardless of journal type, year, and primary article type (eg, general oncology: odds ratio [OR], 0.60; 95% CI, 0.52-0.69). For general oncology articles, women were less likely to be authors of clinical trials at each authorship position than authors at that respective position for observational studies (first, second, and last authors: OR, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.49-0.67; other authors: OR, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.79-0.89). This difference was not seen for radiation oncology or surgical oncology journals.
This cross-sectional study found that female authorship in oncology research literature has increased. However, there remains a dearth of female senior authors, and the overall rise in female authorship has not kept up with the rise in female oncology faculty.
肿瘤学文献的作者存在性别差异。
在高影响力因子的医学期刊的肿瘤学文献中，使用综合的 Medline 索引肿瘤学文章数据集来量化性别作者的趋势。
设计、设置和参与者：这项横断面研究使用 Medline 引文来检查肿瘤学文献中 3 个学科的研究期刊档案。从 2002 年至 2018 年，从 13 种普通肿瘤学/医学、放射肿瘤学和外科期刊中具有医学主题词的所有与肿瘤学相关的文章中纳入了分析对象，包括临床试验、观察性研究（病例报告除外）、综述、系统综述、荟萃分析和所有其他已发表的文章。数据于 2020 年 4 月至 5 月之间进行分析。
作者的性别根据社会命名规范通过第三方性别识别服务 Gender-API.com 确定。根据从互联网上手动获取的公开数据，对该分配进行了内部验证。
随着时间的推移，考虑到期刊类型、作者位置和文章类型，女性作者的趋势。
共发现 58368 篇文章的 420526 位作者，其中 400945 位根据其姓名确定了性别。共有 29.5%（95%CI，29.4%-29.6%）的作者被认定为女性，从 2002 年的 25.5%（95%CI，24.7%-26.3%）上升至 2018 年的 31.7%（95%CI，31.2%-32.3%）。每种期刊类型的主要文章类型的每个亚组在研究期间都出现了女性作者的增加。对于主要文章，最后作者为女性的可能性低于第一作者，无论期刊类型、年份和主要文章类型如何（例如，普通肿瘤学：优势比[OR]，0.60；95%CI，0.52-0.69）。对于普通肿瘤学文章，与观察性研究相比，临床试验中女性在每个作者位置的作者比例低于该位置的作者（第一、第二和最后作者：OR，0.58；95%CI，0.49-0.67；其他作者：OR，0.84；95%CI，0.79-0.89）。放射肿瘤学或外科肿瘤学期刊则没有出现这种差异。
这项横断面研究发现，肿瘤学研究文献中的女性作者数量有所增加。然而，资深女性作者仍然稀缺，女性作者总数的增长并未跟上女性肿瘤学教师人数的增长。
