Gender disparities in multiple myeloma publications.

Abstract

e23000 Background: Gender disparities exist in academia and are disproportionately affecting females. We conducted a cross sectional study to analyze gender disparities in MM publications in high impact hematology/oncology journals between January 1st, 2016 and December 31st, 2020. Methods: Data was collected through Medline/PubMed database search. High impact journals (impact factor > 10) with at least ten MM related publications were included. Impact factor data was based on the 2016 InCites Journal Citation Report. We used Genderize, a validated database, to determine authors’ gender. Search engines were used if gender was undetermined or did not meet a cut-off of 0.9. Unclassified genders after search were excluded from analysis. Results: A total of 679 publications with 8898 authorships were analyzed. Mean number of authors for females vs. males, per publication was 4.4 and 8.7, respectively. Females constituted a third of total authors. Female first authors, corresponding authors and last/senior authors were 34%, 21% and 18%, respectively. 17% of authors of clinical trial publications were females. Publications by country had comparable percentages (30% females as first authors in the U.S. vs. 32% females as first authors in other countries). The proportion of female authorship in 2020 when compared to 2016 was similar (33%). Between 2016 and 2020, there was slight improvement in female first authors (32%-37%), last authors (16%-21%), and corresponding authors (17%-22%). Conclusions: Gender disparities in MM publications exist and are more obvious in the last/corresponding authorship in both the U.S. and other countries. Despite improvement in proportion of female authors, it remains suboptimal when compared to the growing proportion of female physicians. Efforts should be made to identify factors that contribute to these disparities and work to resolve them.