Assessing the Gap in Female Authorship in Neurosurgery Literature: A 20-Year Analysis of Sex Trends in Authorship

Abstract

Publications are considered a major factor for advancement in academia. An effort has been made to study authorship trends in neurosurgery publications. The objective of this study was to investigate authorship trends in the neurosurgery literature for the last 20 years (1998-2018). Articles for the years 1998, 2008, and 2018 were extracted from Neurosurgery, Journal of Neurosurgery, and World Neurosurgery for this retrospective study. Only original articles, case reports, and review articles were included. The gender of the first, senior, and corresponding author was determined. Subspecialty topic, type of paper, geographic origin of articles, and the number of citations for each article were also collected. A total of 3912 articles were included. The number of articles, the total number of authors, and nonexperimental studies increased in the successive decades. A total of 744 women (19.0%) were first authors and 520 (13.3%) were senior authors of their respective publications. A decreasing trend (P < 0.05) was noted between female first authors and male senior authors over time. All 3 journals showed an increasing pattern of female authorships across the 2 decades. A rapid rise in female authorship positions in particular and authorship positions in general demonstrates the diversity that is slowly burgeoning to cater to perspectives and issues that require a multidimensional approach in neurosurgery. Increasing linkages among researchers in neurosurgery on a global scale are evident by the increase in multinational collaborations. Expansive efforts are needed at institutional and individual levels to eradicate sex-based pitfalls that hinder excellence in neurosurgery research.