Long-Term Analysis Of Sex Differences In Prestigious Authorships In Cardiovascular Research Supported By The National Institutes Of Health

Women remain underrepresented on faculties of medicine. Among cardiologists with faculty appointments, for example, only ≈17% are women, and advancement into senior roles seems particularly challenging.1 Differences in the credit that women receive relative to men as prestigious first and last authors for research done by a group may contribute to this gender gap. Previous studies of sex differences in authorship of medical research found women underrepresented in both first and last author positions across subfields, although their share of prestigious authorships has appeared to improve over time.2,3 Yet, the use of hand-collected data from small sets of journals for a sample of years may not provide a representative picture. Moreover, simple counts of prestigious authorships may paint a distorted picture. On the one hand, the number of women participating in academic medicine has risen over time, creating more opportunities for prestigious authorships today than 30 years ago and, in some subfields, relatively more in comparison with others. On the other hand, women still represent the minority of scientists and reportedly have fewer publications than men, reducing their opportunities for prestigious authorships.In this study, we analyzed whether sex differences existed in prestigious authorships on 12 018 National Institutes of Health R01–supported cardiovascular research articles listed in PubMed that appeared across 107 cardiology journals between 1985 and 2015. We also extended our investigation to include 600 747 medical research articles listed in PubMed that appeared …