Data from: Gender disparity in physician authorship among commentary articles in high impact medical journals

Background: There is an attrition of women physicians in academic medicine
hierarchy. Scholarship in medical journals plays a direct role in career
advancement, promotion, and authoritative recognition, and women physician
authors are underrepresented in original research articles. Objectives: We
sought to determine if women physician authors are similarly
underrepresented in commentary articles within high impact journals.
Design/Setting/Participants: In this observational study, we abstracted
gender, degree, and authorship position from January 1, 2014 to October
16, 2018 among commentary articles in three high impact journals: 1) JAMA
Viewpoint; 2) NEJM Perspective; and 3) Annals of Internal Medicine Ideas
and Opinions. Primary Outcome Measure: To compare the percentages of
authors by gender, degree, authorship position, and journal in commentary
articles, and assess for trends over a five-year period. Secondary Outcome
Measures: To compare the proportion of men and women physician authorship
of commentaries relative to the proportion of men and women physician
faculty within academic medicine. To examine the gender concordance
between last and first authors. Results: Of the 2,087 articles during the
study period, 48% were men physician first authors compared to 17% women
physician first authors (p<0.0001). Of the 1,477 articles with more
than one author, similar distributions were found with regard to last
authors: 55% were men physicians compared to only 12% of women physicians
(p<0.0001). The proportion of women physician first authors
increased over time, however the proportion of women physician last
authors remained stagnant. Women authors in the first and last position
were concordant in 9% of articles, men authors in the first and last
author position were concordant in 55% of articles. Conclusions: Women
physician authors remain underrepresented in commentary articles compared
to men physician authors in the first and last author position. The
proportion of women first authors was lowest with a women last author.