Lack of Gender Diversity Among Systematic Reviews Authors in the Urological Literature (1998-2021)

Abstract

Figure. Proportion of women first, second, senior as well as any authorship role in systematic reviews published in the urological literature (1998 to 2021) grouped by 2-year intervals.

Authorship diversity in global evidence synthesis in urology: 1998–2022 analysis of Cochrane reviews

“…Ureteroscopy with laser lithotripsy (LL) has become the treatment of choice for kidney stones of all compositions, while leading the technology development in the surgical management of urinary stone disease [1]. In recent years, dusting treatment that leverages low pulse energy (E p ) and high frequency (F) has gained widespread clinical acceptance over traditional fragmenting treatment that utilises high E p and low F, due to the smaller fragments produced and shortened overall procedure time [2].…”

“…The disparity in female authorship in CUG‐ and non‐CUG‐published reviews may have been secondary to author specialty, with CUG review authors more likely to be urological surgeons. Women were better represented in this study compared to their involvement in other avenues of academic urology, particularly amongst practising urologists and authorship in urology‐specific journals [1,2,5]. Female speakers in high‐profile urology conferences have been reported to comprise just 13.7–19.3% between 2014 and 2019 [6], with lower proportions for speakers at AUA annual meetings [7].…”

“…Female authors and authors from low-and lower-middleincome countries (LMICs) have been historically underrepresented in the urology literature [1][2][3]. Women comprised <20% of co-authors and 15% of senior authors across 18 urology-related journals during 2015-2020 [1].…”

“…Then, we manually extracted data from withdrawn, older versions of reviews since several had different author groups compared to their current versions. Given the significantly higher accuracy of manual search for ascertaining gender compared to the algorithmic estimation methods used in several prior works [1,2], we used the former to achieve ≥95% ascertainment. We endeavoured to capture at least one publicly available webpage listing authors' personal pronouns or picture such as institutional profile, Google Scholar or LinkedIn.…”

“…This work represents the first reporting of authorship diversity of urology-related Cochrane reviews. Its primary strengths are the authorship network analyses and the accuracy of manual gender determination, compared to similar works in other urology journals using name-based algorithmic prediction [1,2]. The work was limited by determination and classification using historic gender conventions, as publicly available data did not permit the exploration of other gender conventions.…”