Gender Concordance of First and Senior Authors in Family Medicine Journals

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Women have increased in presence within academic family medicine over time yet remain underrepresented among senior faculty. Mentorship is a mechanism by which senior faculty support scholarly achievements, accelerating advancement of junior faculty. Methods: We analyzed 10 years (2008-2017) of original research articles in three peer-reviewed family medicine journals. We examined first author/last author pairs by gender as a proxy for mentorship of junior faculty by senior faculty. We compiled family medicine faculty data across 9 years to compare trends in scholarly mentorship with faculty advancement. Results: Female last authorship increased from 28.8% (55/191) of original research articles with a first and last author in 2008 to 41.8% (94/225) in 2017. The share of female first authors on articles with a female last author was 56.4% in 2008 and 2017. The share of female first authors on articles with a male last author increased from 41.2% (56/136) to 55.7% (73/131) between 2008 and 2017. From 2009-2017, the proportion of women increased for assistant, associate, and full professor roles, but remained under 50% for the associate professor role and at 35% for professorship in 2017. Conclusions: Despite disproportionate rates of last authorship and senior faculty positions in family medicine departments, senior female authors have equal if not greater rates of mentorship of female first authors in family medicine literature. The increase in first authorship, last authorship, and faculty position indicates that improvements have occurred in gender advancement over the study period, but gains are still needed to improve gender equity within the field.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Scholarly Activity of Authors of Research Articles Published in the Journal of Physician Assistant Education from 2011-2020

“…This was an unexpected result since typically the last author provides mentorship and has more experience and research expertise than the other authors. 7 For the JPAE articles reviewed in the current study, the PA first and last authors both demonstrated equal research experience and academic relevance, which may allude to more nuanced mentorship patterns among the listed PA authors than in classical medical literature; the PA last author might not necessarily serve as the team leader of the research project as would traditionally be expected. Some PA researchers might have had a more collaborative research system than traditionally anticipated.…”

Factors that affect scientific publication in Africa—A gender perspective

“…A study by Ghiasi et al ( 2015 ) showed that men dominate 80% of all the scientific production in Engineering, where there is a reproduction of the male-dominated scientific structures through repeating of predominantly male-driven collaborations. Some studies in Health Science, however, suggest that the increase in first and last authorship by women implies an improvement in gender advancement (Boekhout et al, 2021 ; Malchuk et al, 2021 ).…”

Women in sustainability research: Examining gender authorship differences in peer-reviewed publications

“…. such as medicine (Malchuk et al, 2021). Authorship order is an important factor for hiring and promotion in some academic disciplines since the first authors are considered to play a leading role in the research and writing process and the last authors are commonly related to seniority (Walker et al, 2010;Helgesson and Eriksson, 2019).…”

“…Authorship order is an important factor for hiring and promotion in some academic disciplines since the first authors are considered to play a leading role in the research and writing process and the last authors are commonly related to seniority (Walker et al, 2010;Helgesson and Eriksson, 2019). Female researchers are more likely to be first authors when the last author is also a woman rather than if it is a man (Aakhus et al, 2018;Malchuk et al, 2021). Women are also underrepresented in single-authored papers (West et al, 2013;Fox et al, 2018), which has high recognition in disciplines such as humanities (Helgesson and Eriksson, 2019).…”

“…However, these positions for women improved over the period studied (6.11 points higher for female last authorship and 5.96 higher in first authorships) (Figure 5). Female researchers are more likely to be listed as the first author when the last author is a woman (55 out of 100 women vs. 31 out of 100 men), which reflects that senior female authors have higher rates of mentorship of female first authors, concurring with Aakhus et al (2018) and Malchuk et al (2021).…”