Trends in Female Authorship of High Impact Publications in Gastroenterology Journals, 1997-2017

Introduction: While the number of women entering gastroenterology (GI) has markedly increased in the last 30 years, only a small proportion of faculty members in GI are female. Since publication of highimpact research predicts advancement in academic medicine, we sought to describe publication trends by gender in leading GI journals. Methods: We abstracted all original, full-length original manuscripts from 1997, 2007, & 2017 from the three highest impact journals publishing original GI research, Gastroenterology, Gut, and the American Journal of Gastroenterology (AJG). Letters to the editor, brief reports, reviews, and editorials were excluded. Data extracted included year of publication, journal, first author and senior author gender, research type (clinical vs. basic/translational), country of origin of the first and senior author, number of authors, and presence of multinational collaboration (Y/N). For this analysis, gender was classified by first name into male, female, and unclear, followed by internet search to further classify gender ambiguous names. Bivariate analyses were used to assess temporal trends using STATA. Results: A total of 2,128 articles were evaluated from 1997, 2007, and 2017 from Gut (584), Gastroenterology (884), and AJG (660) (Table). Approximately 2/3's of the original manuscripts in these journals were clinical, and 1/3 basic science. Of first authors, 86% were classifiable, and of these, 24% were female. Of senior authors, 92% were classifiable, and 13% were female. There was a steady increase in both female first authorship and female senior authorship by decade (p<0.05 for trend, Figure), such that, by 2017, 42% of first authors of publications were female. However, female senior authorship was both less frequent than either female first or male senior authorship in every decade assessed, and increased at a slower rate than female first authorship (p<0.05 for trend). Female authorship was more common in translational/basic science than in clinical research for first (35% vs. 25%) and senior (39% vs. 13%) authors, p<0.05 for each. Conclusion: Female authorship in the highest impact GI journals has increased markedly in the last 20 years, such that women currently compose nearly half of first authors in these journals. Female authorship is more common in translational/basic science than in clinical research. Female senior authorship, however, is both less common and increasing less rapidly than first authorship.1137_A Figure 1 No Caption available.1137_B Figure 2 No Caption available.