Nguyen Anne X, Yoffe Lilian, Li Anna, Trinh Xuan-Vi, Kurian Jerry, Moss Heather E, Wu Albert Y
Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Department of Physiology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Front Neurol. 2021 Aug 23;12:715428. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2021.715428. eCollection 2021.
Gender disparity in the field of neurology impedes scientific advancements and innovations. In 2018, 45.0% of neurology and neurological subspecialty residents were women. Despite a notable rise in the proportion of women neurologists over the past decades, inequalities regarding publication proportions between men and women persist in the field. This cohort study examines authorship trends in articles published in 155 international neurology journals, identified as those listed in the annual Journal Citation Reports' "Clinical Neurology" section. Authors' names, authorship positions and countries of affiliation were extracted from PubMed for indexed articles published from 1946 to 2020. Gender-API (a validated and highly accurate application program interface) assigned binary genders to authors. Author gender proportions were compared across subspecialties, authorship position and years. In 303,385 unique articles, 1,663,036 total authors were identified of which 34.1% were women. Neuroradiology demonstrated the lowest proportion of women authors (21.3%), while neurogenetics displayed the highest (44.5%). In articles with multiple authors, both men and women last authors were more likely to publish with a male first author, though this was significantly more pronounced for men last authors (1.86 vs. 1.08; < 0.001). From 2002 to 2020, women remained in the minority of last (24.6%), first (36.2%), and middle author positions (35.8%). The authorship gender distribution in neurological journals neither reflects the gender proportion of neurologists in the field overall nor in any subspecialty examined. We also find a tendency for senior and junior authors of the same gender to publish together which perpetuates authorship inequity. Further work is needed to identify underlying causes so that interventions might be developed to improve authorship diversity.
神经病学领域的性别差异阻碍了科学进步与创新。2018年，神经病学及神经亚专科住院医师中有45.0%为女性。尽管在过去几十年里，女性神经科医生的比例显著上升，但该领域男女在论文发表比例方面的不平等现象依然存在。这项队列研究调查了155种国际神经病学期刊上发表文章的作者趋势，这些期刊被确定为年度《期刊引证报告》“临床神经病学”部分所列的期刊。从1946年至2020年发表的索引文章中，从PubMed中提取了作者姓名、作者排名及所属国家。性别应用程序接口（一种经过验证且高度准确的应用程序接口）为作者分配了二元性别。比较了各亚专科、作者排名及年份的作者性别比例。在303385篇独特的文章中，共识别出1663036位作者，其中34.1%为女性。神经放射学领域的女性作者比例最低（21.3%），而神经遗传学领域的女性作者比例最高（44.5%）。在有多位作者的文章中，男性和女性的最后一位作者与男性第一作者合作发表文章的可能性更大，不过男性最后一位作者的这种情况更为明显（1.86比1.08；<0.001）。从2002年到2020年，女性在最后一位作者（24.6%）、第一作者（36.2%）和中间作者排名（35.8%）中仍占少数。神经病学期刊中的作者性别分布既不能反映该领域神经科医生的总体性别比例，也不能反映所研究的任何亚专科的性别比例。我们还发现，同性别的资深作者和初级作者有共同发表文章的倾向，这使得作者署名不平等现象长期存在。需要进一步开展工作来确定潜在原因，以便制定干预措施来提高作者署名的多样性。
