Charpignon Marie-Laure, Matos Joao, Nakayama Luis Filipe, Gallifant Jack, Alfonso Pia Gabrielle I, Cobanaj Marisa, Fiske Amelia Morel, Gates Alexander J, Ho Frances Dominique V, Jain Urvish, Kashkooli Mohammad, Link Naira, McCoy Liam G, Shaffer Jonathan, Celi Leo Anthony
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
BMJ Open. 2025 Jan 22;15(1):e086982. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2024-086982.
Health research that significantly impacts global clinical practice and policy is often published in high-impact factor (IF) medical journals. These outlets play a pivotal role in the worldwide dissemination of novel medical knowledge. However, researchers identifying as women and those affiliated with institutions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have been largely under-represented in high-IF journals across multiple fields of medicine. To evaluate disparities in gender and geographical representation among authors who have published in any of five top general medical journals, we conducted scientometric analyses using a large-scale dataset extracted from the , , , and .
Author metadata from all articles published in the selected journals between 2007 and 2022 were collected using the DimensionsAI platform. The Genderize.io Application Programming Interface was then used to infer each author's likely gender based on their extracted first name. The World Bank country classification was used to map countries associated with researcher affiliations to the LMIC or the high-income country (HIC) category. We characterised the overall gender and country income category representation across the five medical journals. In addition, we computed article-level diversity metrics and contrasted their distributions across the journals.
We studied 151 536 authors across 49 764 articles published in five top medical journals, over a period spanning 15 years. On average, approximately one-third (33.1%) of the authors of a given paper were inferred to be women; this result was consistent across the journals we studied. Further, 86.6% of the teams were exclusively composed of HIC authors; in contrast, only 3.9% were exclusively composed of LMIC authors. The probability of serving as the first or last author was significantly higher if the author was inferred to be a man (18.1% vs 16.8%, p<0.01) or was affiliated with an institution in a HIC (16.9% vs 15.5%, p<0.01). Our primary finding reveals that having a diverse team promotes further diversity, within the same dimension (ie, gender or geography) and across dimensions. Notably, papers with at least one woman among the authors were more likely to also involve at least two LMIC authors (11.7% vs 10.4% in baseline, p<0.001; based on inferred gender); conversely, papers with at least one LMIC author were more likely to also involve at least two women (49.4% vs 37.6%, p<0.001; based on inferred gender).
We provide a scientometric framework to assess authorship diversity. Our research suggests that the inclusiveness of high-impact medical journals is limited in terms of both gender and geography. We advocate for medical journals to adopt policies and practices that promote greater diversity and collaborative research. In addition, our findings offer a first step towards understanding the composition of teams conducting medical research globally and an opportunity for individual authors to reflect on their own collaborative research practices and possibilities to cultivate more diverse partnerships in their work.
对全球临床实践和政策有重大影响的健康研究通常发表在高影响因子（IF）的医学期刊上。这些期刊在全球范围内传播新的医学知识方面发挥着关键作用。然而，在多个医学领域，女性研究者以及来自低收入和中等收入国家（LMICs）机构的研究者在高IF期刊上的代表性一直很低。为了评估在五本顶级综合医学期刊上发表文章的作者在性别和地域代表性方面的差异，我们使用从《柳叶刀》《新英格兰医学杂志》《美国医学会杂志》《英国医学杂志》和《内科医学年鉴》中提取的大规模数据集进行了科学计量分析。
使用DimensionsAI平台收集2007年至2022年期间在选定期刊上发表的所有文章的作者元数据。然后使用Genderize.io应用程序编程接口根据提取的名字推断每位作者可能的性别。世界银行国家分类用于将与研究者所属机构相关的国家映射到低收入和中等收入国家或高收入国家（HIC）类别。我们描述了五本医学期刊中总体的性别和国家收入类别代表性。此外，我们计算了文章层面的多样性指标，并对比了它们在各期刊中的分布情况。
在15年的时间里，我们研究了在五本顶级医学期刊上发表的49764篇文章中的151536名作者。平均而言，给定一篇论文的作者中约有三分之一（33.1%）被推断为女性；这一结果在我们研究的各期刊中是一致的。此外，86.6%的团队完全由高收入国家的作者组成；相比之下，只有3.9%的团队完全由低收入和中等收入国家的作者组成。如果作者被推断为男性（18.1%对16.8%，p<0.01）或隶属于高收入国家的机构（16.9%对15.5%，p<0.01），担任第一或最后作者的概率显著更高。我们的主要发现表明，拥有一个多元化的团队会在同一维度（即性别或地域）以及不同维度上促进进一步的多元化。值得注意的是，作者中有至少一名女性的论文更有可能也涉及至少两名低收入和中等收入国家的作者（基于推断性别，基线时为11.7%对10.4%，p<0.001）；相反，有至少一名低收入和中等收入国家作者的论文更有可能也涉及至少两名女性（基于推断性别，49.4%对37.6%，p<0.001）。
我们提供了一个科学计量框架来评估作者多样性。我们的研究表明，高影响力医学期刊在性别和地域方面的包容性有限。我们倡导医学期刊采用促进更大多样性和合作研究的政策和做法。此外，我们的研究结果为了解全球医学研究团队的构成迈出了第一步，也为个体作者反思自己的合作研究实践以及在工作中培养更多样化伙伴关系的可能性提供了契机。
