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  • Study describes female authorship trends in ophthalmic journals

    Comprehensive Ophthalmology

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    Review of: Authorship Gender Composition in the Ophthalmology Literature from 2015 through 2019

    Kalavar M, Watane A, Balaji N, et al. Ophthalmology, in press

    This study tracked female authorship trends in ophthalmic literature over a 5-year period.

    Study design

    Researchers used a gender inference tool to analyze the gender of the first and last authors from articles published in 4 general and 5 subspecialty ophthalmology journals between January 2015 and December 2019.

    Outcomes

    Of the 17,100 articles and 31,591 authors analyzed, 8,775 were unique male authors and 5,224 were unique female authors. Overall, women accounted for 32% of authors and were more often listed as first author than last author (38% vs. 27%; P<0.001). During the study period, the proportion of female first authors significantly increased for all journals and subspecialty journals (both P=0.007), but not general journals (P=0.07). The proportion of female last authors significantly increased for general, subspecialty and all journals (P=0.007, 0.025 and 0.025, respectively).

    Limitations

    The gender interpretation software used may be flawed. The analysis was limited to the last 5 years and only included U.S. ophthalmology journals.

    Clinical significance

    Female authorship increased in both first and last author positions over 5 years, but gender disparities remain.