Assessing the gap in female authorship in the journal Emergency Radiology: trends over a 20-year period

Abstract

Purpose

To examine trends in female authorship in the journal Emergency Radiology from January 1994 to December 2014.

Methods

We obtained institutional review board approval for our study. We retrospectively reviewed a total of 1617 articles published in the journal Emergency Radiology over a 20-year period. Original articles, case reports, review articles, and pictorial essays were included. The first and last position author’s gender was categorized as female or male. We analyzed trends by comparing the first and last position authors of original articles from the first and last year reviewed. We utilized Chi-square test for statistical analysis, with a p value <0.05 noted as significant.

Results

One thousand four hundred twenty articles met our inclusion criteria. There were 1420 first position authors and 1295 last position authors. There were 125 articles that had a sole author—these authors were considered as first position authors only. We determined, as best as possible, the gender of 96% of the authors. Overall, female authors were 21% of first position authors (290 of 1368) and 15% of last position authors (183 of 1246). Thirty-two percent of articles with female last position authors also had female first position authors (58 of 183). There was a statistically significant increase in female last position authors, from 12.9% in 1994 to 21.3% in 2014 (p = 0.026), a non-significant increase in female first position authors, from 17.5% in 1994 to 20.9% in 2014 (p = 0.514), and a non-significant increase in articles with both a first and last female author, from 25% in 1994 to 35% in 2014 (p = 0.593).

Conclusion

Over the last 20 years, there has been a statistically significant upward trend in female last position authors publishing in the journal Emergency Radiology.