Patterns of authorship in ecology and evolution: First, last, and corresponding authorship vary with gender and geography

Abstract

The position of an author on the byline of a paper affects the inferences readers make about their contributions to the research. We examine gender differences in authorship in the ecology literature using two datasets: submissions to six journals between 2010 and 2015 (regardless of whether they were accepted), and manuscripts published by 151 journals between 2009 and 2015. Women were less likely to be last (i.e., “senior”) authors (averaging ~23% across journals, years, and datasets) and sole authors (~24%), but more likely to be first author (~38%), relative to their overall frequency of authorship (~31%). However, the proportion of women in all authorship roles, except sole authorship, has increased year‐on‐year. Women were less likely to be authors on papers with male last authors, and all‐male papers were more abundant than expected given the overall gender ratio. Women were equally well represented on papers published in higher versus lower impact factor journals at all authorship positions. Female first authors were less likely to serve as corresponding author of their papers; this difference increased with the degree of gender inequality in the author's home country, but did not depend on the gender of the last author. First authors from non‐English‐speaking countries were less likely to serve as corresponding author of their papers, especially if the last author was from an English‐speaking country. That women more often delegate corresponding authorship to one of their coauthors may increase the likelihood that readers undervalue their role in the research by shifting credit for their contributions to coauthors. We suggest that author contribution statements be more universally adopted and that these statements declare how and/or why the corresponding author was selected for this role.

Gender diversity of editorial boards and gender differences in the peer review process at six journals of ecology and evolution

“…By 2015, women were relatively well‐represented on editorial boards (29% of the editors in our dataset) compared with their representation in the reviewer pool (27% in our dataset) and in the pool of last authors of ecology papers (23% in an analysis of papers published from 2010–2015; Fox et al, ). On the glass‐half‐empty side, women were underrepresented as reviewers (27% in 2015 in our dataset) compared to the pool of authors (31% women authors across all author positions; Fox et al, ) of ecology papers published between 2010 and 2015, but especially compared with the membership of the societies that publish these journals (British Ecological Society and the Ecological Society of America, which were 40% and 37% women, respectively, in the later periods of our database). However, the representation of women in these societies is lower among nonstudents than among students (Martin, ), so the under‐representation of women is not as extreme as comparison to society memberships would suggest; for example, women make up 40% of all members of the Society for the Study of Evolution (which publishes Evolution ), but only 33% of nonstudent members (Débarre et al, ).…”

“…Values presented in the figure are averages, first averaging across editors within each journal*year combination, then across years within each journal, and then across journals (Fox, Ritchey, & Paine, 2018). However, women were only ~23% of last authors on papers during this same period (Fox et al, 2018); last authors are commonly the "senior" author, that is, the principal investigator or research supervisor (Duffy, 2017), which may better reflect the pool of people from Editors (also 27%). However, these gender ratios are substantially lower than the proportion of women in the broader ecological community.…”

Gender differences in peer review outcomes and manuscript impact at six journals of ecology and evolution

“…In a previous paper, Fox et al () found that ~20% of first authors defer corresponding authorship to one of their coauthors, and that female first authors defer corresponding authorship more often than do male first authors. The corresponding author listed on the cover page of the manuscript is the author that submitted the paper to the journal for >99% of papers considered by Functional Ecology (Fox, Burns, Muncy, & Meyer, ).…”

“…Instead, we suspect the low success of papers being corresponded by someone other than the first author is because either: (a) These papers are being written, at least in part, by someone less familiar with (or less committed to) the research being described in the manuscript, such as a research mentor or a colleague more fluent in English; or (b) first authors are more willing to defer corresponding authorship when a paper is of lower significance and/or reports less robust research. Regardless of the explanation, this difference may be important for understanding gender differences in publishing success because women defer corresponding authorship more often than do men (Edwards et al ; Fox et al, ), possibly because they are more likely than men to leave science (Adamo, ). Our results suggest that the gender difference in corresponding authorship contributes to the gender difference in peer‐review outcomes; including corresponding authorship in our statistical models causes first author gender differences to become statistically nonsignificant (cumulative through the entire process).…”

“…Regardless of the explanation, this difference may be important for understanding gender differences in publishing success because women defer corresponding authorship more often than do men (Edwards et al 2018;Fox et al, 2018), possibly because they are more likely than men to leave science (Adamo, 2013). Our results suggest that the gender difference in corresponding authorship contributes to the gender difference in peer-review outcomes; including corresponding authorship in our statistical models causes first author gender differences to become statistically nonsignificant (cumulative through the entire process).…”