Gender differences in pulmonology and critical care authorship and editorial boards

Abstract

Objective

This study aims to characterize the gender distribution of first authors, senior authors, and editorial board members across several high-impact factor journals in PCCM.

Methods

In this cross-sectional study, we analysed gender disparities in critical care authorship and editorial boards, based on publications from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2021 from the top 20 high impact journals based on the Journal of Citation Reports.

Results

Among 20 journals (median impact factor of 6.66), 25% of editors-in-chief and 28.8% of editorial board members were female. From 2019 to 2021, a total of 23,994 articles were published. Female first authors and last authors made up 29.1% and 21.2% of the authorship, respectively (n = 6637 articles).

Conclusions

Our study demonstrates significant gender disparities in critical care authorship and editorial boards, with males predominantly filling the roles of editors in chief, editorial members, and first and senior authors. Despite this significant difference in gender distribution, there was no statistically significant correlation between authorship and editor gender.

Keywords:

• Diversity
• gender disparity
• gender equity
• leadership
• pulmonology and critical care
• women

Transparency

Declaration of financial/other relationships

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

A.B.S takes responsibility for the content of the manuscript, including the data and analysis. A.N., A.S., A.H., D.R., I.G., S.K., S.V., A.A.E.S., B.D., A.J., A.V., L.S and A.B.S designed the study. A.F., A.N., B.D., S.A and A.B.S analyzed the study and provided critical revisions; all other authors provided critical revisions to the manuscript; all authors agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Acknowledgements

Caitlan Rossi, MA edited the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded