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Quantifying gender disparity in physician authorship among commentary articles in three high-impact medical journals: an observational study

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Mamtani, Mira, Shofer, Frances, Mudan, Anita, Khatri, Utsha, Walker, Rachael, Perrone, Jeanmarie, Aysola, Jaya·2020·BMJ Open
DOI 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-034056PMC PMC7044872
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Abstract

Background: Scholarship plays a direct role in career advancement, promotion and authoritative recognition, and women physicians remain under-represented as authors of original research articles. Objective: We sought to determine if women physician authors are similarly under-represented in commentary articles within high-impact journals. Design/Setting/Participants: In this observational study, we abstracted and analysed author information (gender and degree) and authorship position from commentary articles published in three high-impact journals between 1 January 2014 and 16 October 2018. Primary outcome measure: Authorship rate of commentary articles over a 5-year period by gender, degree, authorship position and journal. Secondary outcome measures: To compare the proportion of men and women physician authorship of commentaries relative to the proportion of men and women physician faculty within academic medicine; and to examine the gender concordance among the last and first authors in articles with more than one author. Results: Of the 2087 articles during the study period, 48% were men physician first authors compared with 17% women physician first authors (p<0.0001). Of the 1477 articles with more than one author, similar distributions were found with regard to last authors: 55% were men physicians compared with only 12% women physicians (p<0.0001). The proportion of women physician first authors increased over time; however, the proportion of women physician last authors remained stagnant. Women coauthored with women in the first and last authorship positions in 9% of articles. In contrast, women coauthored with men in the first and last author positions, respectively, in 55% of articles. Conclusions: Women physician authors remain under-represented in commentary articles compared with men physician authors in the first and last author positions. Women also coauthored commentaries with other women in far fewer numbers.

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  • Female academics continue to lag behind in terms of key output criteria, such as citations and visibility.

    “Female academics continue to lag behind in terms of key output criteria, such as citations and visibility33–37.”

    From Scientific publications that use promotional language in the abstract receive more citations and public attention (2025) · cites this paper as [36]

    The Results (Abstract; page unavailable) show that women physicians were less represented than men as first and last authors of commentary articles. The Conclusions (page unavailable) describe this as an attenuation of women’s voice in academia, supporting the visibility point in academic medicine. The paper does not report a gender gap in citation counts or establish the claim for female academics generally. (LLM, conf=0.86)

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Metadata

Authors
Mamtani, M., Shofer, F., Mudan, A., Khatri, U., Walker, R., Perrone, J., & Aysola, J.
Affiliations
  • University of Pennsylvania (US)
  • Temple University (US)
Corresponding author
Mamtani, Mira
ORCID
Venue
BMJ Open
Publisher
BMJ
Published
2020-02
Volume
10
Issue
2
Pages
e034056
ISSN
2044-6055 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1136/bmjopen-2019-034056
PMC
PMC7044872
OpenAlex
W3007870274
Cited by
21
References
2
Citations by year
2025: 5 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 3
FWCI
5.35
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • BMJ Open (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • HighWire Press Open Archive (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Diversity and Career in Medicine
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Sex and Gender in Healthcare
  • Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
Keywords
gender disparities, women physicians, authorship, author's position, first authorship, last authorship, gender concordance, underrepresentation, academic medicine, medical journals
MeSH terms
Authorship, Career Mobility, Female, Humans, Male, Periodicals as Topic, Physicians, Women, Journal Impact Factor, Sexism, Medical Writing

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