Authors Research Articles

The Expression of Gratitude in English and Arabic Doctoral Dissertation Acknowledgements

Abstract This corpus-based study explores the expression of gratitude in the acknowledgement section of doctoral dissertations in both English and Arabic. The objective is to analyse how gratitude in academic discourse is structured in these languages and to explore any differences related to gender. The study examines 80 dissertations (40 in English and 40 in Arabic), further divided by the authors’ gender (20 male and 20 female for each language). Data collection involved searching for doctoral dissertations from various sources, verifying the authenticity of the native language through biographical checks, and categorising the acknowledgements based on the year and field of study. The analysis utilised a mixed-methods approach based on Hyland and Tse’s (2004) framework, enabling quantitative and qualitative text analysis. The study revealed distinct differences in gratitude expression patterns between English and Arabic dissertations: English acknowledgements often used performative verbs and adjectives, while Arabic acknowledgements primarily employed nominalisation. Notably, Arabic texts showed no use of passive constructions or adjectives. Gender-related differences were also observed, such as the preference for nominalisation among male Arabic authors and the preference for bare mention among female English authors. These findings underscore the significant cultural and linguistic influences on the construction of gratitude in academic acknowledgements. The research contributes valuable insights into pedagogical approaches to teaching academic writing and highlights the interplay between language, culture, and gender in scholarly communications.

Marginalisation and Portrayal of Women Characters in Indian Diasporic Writings: A Study of Jhumpa Lahiri and Bharati Mukherjee

Most authors of post-colonial diasporic origin tend to write in a formulaic fashion. Inviting readers from all over the world, they use methods as varied as stream of consciousness, immigration, magic realism, alienation, and the capacity to adjust to a new area and culture. The literary world has taken notice of Indian literature in English because of the depth and relevance of its subject matter. The contemporary trend in Indian writing in English is unparalleled, despite the fact that outstanding literary works written in English were discovered a century ago. Numerous authors have gained widespread recognition on both a national and international scale. Some of the most well-known Indian authors of the modern era did not even grow up in India. Modern Indian English literature found a strong ally in India's female authors. They have shed light on many of the ongoing problems that women have had to deal with for centuries. Women who have stepped out to demonstrate their efficacy in numerous fields have been met with resistance from patriarchal culture. An identity crisis does not arise from one specific event or cause. A person's identity crisis may have been brought on by a number of different things.

The multifaceted factors affecting the publication times of pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus articles: what has changed in two decades

AbstractExpeditious publication is an important factor when considering publishing ophthalmic research. We investigated the factors associated with shorter publication times in pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus (POS). We analyzed 2487 POS articles from 8 ophthalmology journals publishing POS articles. Time from submission to acceptance, from acceptance to publication, and from submission to publication were calculated for each article. We compared trends over time of factors affecting the publication times from 2002 to 2007 and those from 2014 to 2018. Median peer review durations were 156 days from submission to acceptance; 79 days from acceptance to publication, and 244 days from submission to publication. The American Journal of Ophthalmology, JAMA Ophthalmology, and Strabismus had the shortest submission to publication time. Authors from Africa, East Europe, Central and South America received the fastest processing time in all time categories, although most authors were based in North America and UK. All-time intervals decreased annually, significantly more during the first decade. In the study's second period, more co-authors and affiliated departments correlated with shorter review times. Manuscripts in higher Impact Factor (IF) journals had faster publication times in the first decade. Female senior authors faced longer submission-to-acceptance times in the first decade. This gender gap disappeared in the second period. A general improvement occurred with most journals, specifically those journals with a higher number of co-authors and affiliated departments, indicating an efficient collaborative authorship. Low-income regions benefited from comparatively shorter time intervals. The gender gap in senior authorship diminished over time.

Gender Distribution of Course Material Authors in a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Program.

The gender distribution of authors in the health sciences literature has been well documented. We explored whether this distribution persists among library course reserves for a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program, as course reserves are veterinary faculty members' own teaching materials. Such a bibliometric analysis of course reserves provides a novel method of examining curricular materials. In the Fall of 2022, researchers collected the library's current course reserve metadata, including fields, such as author names and material types. Binary gender was determined based on a variety of sources: traditional naming conventions, gender presentation in photographs, pronouns in signatures, and biographies. Of the 167 exported authors, 162 were included for further analysis in SPSS. Course reserves' authors were analyzed by collaborators and media type. The dichotomous gender distribution of first authors was 76% male/ 24% female. Female first authors were more likely to have collaborators than male first authors (39% vs 26%). When collaborations did occur, first and second authors had the same gender at a significantly higher rate. Exploring author gender across material type, we found that generally, the first author gender ratio remained 3 males to every female. Contextualizing these results in the framework of contemporary health sciences literature, we found that the gender disparities in course reserves to be unsurprising, while still disappointing.

Association of Double-Blind Reviews With Increases in Women as First Authors: An Initial Report From the Journal of Cardiac Failure

Introduction: Women continue to remain under-represented in academic publishing in cardiology. Some evidence suggests that double-blind peer reviews may mitigate the impact of gender bias. In July 2021, the Journal of Cardiac Failure implemented a process for the conduct of double-blind reviews after previously utilizing single-blind reviews with the aim of improving author diversity. The purpose of the current manuscript was to examine the association between changes in authorship characteristics and implementation of double-blind reviews. Methods: Manuscripts were stratified into 3 eras: March – September 2021 (Era 1 – prior to double blind reviews), March – September 2022 (Era 2), and March – September 2023 (Era 3). All article types except invited editorials were included. Data were abstracted, including names, genders, ranks, and discipline of first and senior authors. Results: A total of 310 manuscripts were included in the analysis. The proportion of women first authors increased from 24% in Era 1 to 34% in Era 2 to 39% in Era 3 while the percentage of women authors serving in a senior authorship role remained fairly stable over time around 21-22%. Even after adjusting for region, article type, first author discipline, and last author gender, there was an increase in female first author over time (p= 0.015). Manuscripts with a female senior author were significantly more likely to have a female first author. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that double-blind peer review may contribute to increased gender diversity of first authors and highlight areas for future improvement for JCF and academic publishing.

Keinen Verfasser, nur eine Verfasserin? Literarische agency schreibender und ‘geschriebener’ Frauen in Prag (1770–80)

ABSTRACT This article deals with the characteristics of female authorship in Prague in the 1770s. The moral weeklies Die Unsichtbare (1771) and Die Sichtbare (1771) highlight the differences between the Prague reading public's expectations for female writers to focus on superficial, feminine topics and the complex and sophisticated writing of the female authors themselves. Experiences of limitation due to writing in Bohemia, in less valued genres such as novels, and because of their gender in fact led to women writers such as Viktorie Rupp and Maria Anna Sager developing self-confidence as authors. A central aspect of this paper is the juxtaposition of male and female writing patterns and their contrasts, as illustrated by Sager in her novels Die verwechselten Töchter (1771) and Karolinens Tagebuch (1774). Finally, her contributions as a female writer are contextualized within the framework of contemporary literary criticism and the academic aesthetics surrounding the Prague professor Karl Heinrich Seibt.

As mulheres da ditadura representadas em Cova 312

This research investigates the way in which Brazilian literary journalism represent women, especially considering the issue of violence. For this, a critical reading of the book-reports in the Jabuti Award is presented. After attesting to the small number of female authors and the lack of representation of violence of this group, an analysis of Cova 312, by journalist Daniela Arbex, is developed. Despite focusing on the representation of the Brazilian military dictatorship and exposing a male protagonist, the book-report emphasizes women who belonged to that context, showing the most different possibilities of struggle and confrontation the female figure experienced in that context.

Women are under-represented in adaptation policy research and are more likely to emphasise justice topics

Abstract This paper is the first to analyse the role of women authors in fostering justice-relevant topics in climate adaptation research. As representation, citation and payment patterns remain gender-biased across scientific disciplines, we explore the case of climate science, particularly adaptation, as its most human-oriented facet. In climate research and policy, there has been a recent surge of interest in climate justice topics: mentions of justice have increased almost tenfold in IPCC Working Group 2 reports between the latest assessment cycles (AR5 and AR6). We conduct a systematic examination of the topic space in the adaptation policy scholarship. As it is a vast and rapidly growing field, we use topic modelling, an unsupervised machine learning method, to identify the literature on climate justice and related fields, as well as to examine the relationship between topic prevalence and the gender of the authors. We find climate change adaptation policy research to be male dominated, with women holding 38.8% of first and 28.8% of last authorships. However, we observe topic-specific variability, whereby the share of female authors is higher among publications on justice-relevant topics. Female authorship is highly linked to topics such as Community, Local Knowledge, and Governance, but less to Food Security and Climate Finance. Our findings corroborate the evidence that female authors play a significant role in advancing the research and dialogue on the relationship between climate change and areas that have meaningful impact on lives of women and other marginalised groups.

Kate: A Voice to Sexual Abuse Trauma in Helen Benedict’s Sand Queen

war trauma and its relationship to women in regions of conflict are conceptualized by the confusion of identities between male and female identity, soldiering, and even immigration issues. The majority of combat literature has been written by men, but Sand Queen distinguishes apart because it emphasizes the viewpoint of the female character and author. The story of Kate develops to depict the gruesome details and complexities of the conflict. Her experience demonstrates that women face particular challenges throughout combat as well as in civilian life. In Sand Queen, the consequences of the war trauma can be seen in the characters' reactions throughout the dialogical narrative that recounts the terrible experiences of a female soldier.

Representation of Violence Against Women in Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds No Terror and The Binding Vine

Shashi Deshpande is one of the prominent female authors in the Indian writing in English who paved the path of a ‘new woman’ for a glorious and hopeful future. Though the female characters initially appear to be subordinated and subjugated but ultimately, they struggle against the patriarchal prejudices and stereotypes to make a mark of their own. The paper aims to bring out how violence has been used to suppress and subjugate women in a patriarchal setup by exploring Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds No Terrors and The Binding Vine. The Dark Holds No Terrors exposed the sensitive issue of marital rape and gender discrimination while The Binding Vine shows women facing violence through rape, marital rape, mental harassment and gender discrimination.

Gender inequalities in oral medicine and pathology research: Temporal trends of two decades.

To analyze gender inequities and trends in the authorship of articles published in high-impact factor journals of the field of Oral Medicine and Pathology. The gender and country of first and last authors were retrieved from original articles published between 2000 and 2022. Poisson regression models and classification and regression tree (CART) analysis were performed. A total of 6595 studies were analyzed for first authorship, and 6627 for last authorship. Only 39.2% (CI 95% 38.0-40.3) of the first authors and 24.1% (CI 95% 23.1-25.1) of the last authors were females. Females consistently faced underrepresentation throughout the 23-year evaluation. The only region where female first authors are not a minority is Latin America. Having a female as the last author increased the prevalence of females in the first author position by 42% (PR = 1.42, CI 95% [1.30-1.54]). The most important discriminant variable by CART was the first author region. Although a slight decrease in underrepresentation was noted over the period, after 2020, the gender gap tended to widen for both first and last authors. It is crucial to implement measures aimed at attracting, retaining, and advancing women in the field of science, while also actively monitoring advancements toward achieving gender equity.

Ciąża i macierzyństwo jako doświadczenia transgresyjne we współczesnej literaturze polskiej – próba ujęcia queerowego

This article discusses a selection of texts by contemporary Polish feminist female authors who explore the transgressive and queer aspects of pregnancy and motherhood. The analysis, indebted to the observations of Maggie Nelson’s essay The Argonauts (Polish transl. by K. Gucio, Wołowiec 2020), explore the ways in which Martyna Bunda, Izabela Morska, Barbara Klicka and Inga Iwasiów present motherhood as act of transgression and liberation from a reproductive control system. As a rule this type of discourse includes, the article notes, some elements of the illness narrative.

Transformation of Women from Silent Lambs to Rational Nightingales in Shakespeare’s Play “Taming of the Shrew” and its Modern Re-Writing “Vinegar Girl”

Throughout the centuries, every individual living in society takes certain bias and beliefs into centre. These beliefs determine the way they treat each other and play a crucial role in daily life. Gender as a notion affects general perception of women’s role at this point. In this study, the subject matter of gender inequality and discrimination will be handled in Shakespeare’s well-known play “Taming Of The Shrew” and its modern interpretation named “Vinegar Girl” in terms of representation of women according to social codes. Thus, the difference between sex and gender will be firstly examined in a detailed way. As a debated matter, gender is a social construct whereas sex is based on biological level. Then, the universality of Shakespeare’s plays are still there since the social regulations and codes have validity in the modern world. In this sense, no matter how many years have passed, the characters in the novel of “Vinegar Girl” present the issue of discrimination and inequality between women and men on social level. The aim of this study is to highlight accepted role of women in society through various discourses, acts and behaviours. For this reason, descriptive research method which describes the features of phenomenon will be used to get necessary information about stated problem. Furthermore, the discussions about women’s perception as gender roles and transformation of them as individuals having a voice on their own in “Vinegar Girl” by a female author will be handled and presented to the reader by comparing this contemporary version to Shakespeare’s specific play.

Refleksi Pengalaman Perempuan dalam Memoar Berteman dengan Kematian karya Sinta Ridwan

This research aims to reflect women's biological experience, women's language, women's psychology in the memoir Berteman dengan Kematian by Sinta Ridwan. This research uses the approach of Ginokritik Studies. The method used in this research is descriptive method with content analysis technique. The results of the data on the gynocritical analysis of the memoir Berteman dengan Kematian by Sinta Ridwan showed that there are three gynocritical models, namely: (1) women's biological experience, namely women's bodily experience, expressing all feelings, inner voices, women's desires, the appearance of the female body. (2) women's language expression, namely using their own style and language to model women's language, women's language can be seen from the aspects of conversation, intonation, and strategies in women's language (3) women's psychological experience, namely the experience and psychology of the author of all the emotions depicted in the work based on the author's psychological situation, female authors write stories with a background of suffering and madness as a form of expressing all the emotions that occur to women.

Twenty-Five Years of Progress-Lessons Learned From JMIR Publications to Address Gender Parity in Digital Health Authorships: Bibliometric Analysis.

Digital health research plays a vital role in advancing equitable health care. The diversity of research teams is thereby instrumental in capturing societal challenges, increasing productivity, and reducing bias in algorithms. Despite its importance, the gender distribution within digital health authorship remains largely unexplored. This study aimed to investigate the gender distribution among first and last authors in digital health research, thereby identifying predicting factors of female authorship. This bibliometric analysis examined the gender distribution across 59,980 publications from 1999 to 2023, spanning 42 digital health journals indexed in the Web of Science. To identify strategies ensuring equality in research, a detailed comparison of gender representation in JMIR journals was conducted within the field, as well as against a matched sample. Two-tailed Welch 2-sample t tests, Wilcoxon rank sum tests, and chi-square tests were used to assess differences. In addition, odds ratios were calculated to identify predictors of female authorship. The analysis revealed that 37% of first authors and 30% of last authors in digital health were female. JMIR journals demonstrated a higher representation, with 49% of first authors and 38% of last authors being female, yielding odds ratios of 1.96 (95% CI 1.90-2.03; P<.001) and 1.78 (95% CI 1.71-1.84; P<.001), respectively. Since 2008, JMIR journals have consistently featured a greater proportion of female first authors than male counterparts. Other factors that predicted female authorship included having female authors in other relevant positions and gender discordance, given the higher rate of male last authors in the field. There was an evident shift toward gender parity across publications in digital health, particularly from the publisher JMIR Publications. The specialized focus of its sister journals, equitable editorial policies, and transparency in the review process might contribute to these achievements. Further research is imperative to establish causality, enabling the replication of these successful strategies across other scientific fields to bridge the gender gap in digital health effectively.

Gender gap in cardiothoracic surgery randomized controlled trial and post-hoc analysis of randomized controlled trial authorship from 2014 to 2020.

To estimate gender disparities among first and last authorships in cardiothoracic randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and association of gender with publications in high-impact journals. PubMed/MEDLINE database was searched from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2020 using R statistical software via the 'easyPubMed' package to retrieve pertinent data. The 'gender' package was utilized to determine gender using the United States Social Security Administration Baby Name Data. The percentage of female first and last authors were computed along with determining the uniqueness of the names. The association of gender and publication in high-impact peer-reviewed journals was delineated. Jonckheere's trend was computed. The database search retrieved a total of 4820 RCTs, of which gender was encoded for the first author in 3247 (67%) RCTs, among which 911 (28%) studies had women as first authors, with a similar trend across 7 years (P = 0.23). Gender was encoded for the last author of 3204 (66%) RCTs, of which 622 (19%) studies had women as last authors, with a similar trend across 7 years (P = 0.45). A total of 627 studies were published in high-impact-factor journals, among which 79 (16%) studies had female first authors and 67 (13%) studies had female last authors. There is an obvious gender disparity of first and last authors in cardiothoracic surgery-related RCTs, with a similar trend across 7 years. However, the post-hoc analysis did demonstrate a positive trend with an increase in the number of female first authors, demonstrating progress.

L’ús pòstum de les figures literàries en l’esfera pública: pràctiques i processos commemoratius en la cultura catalana contemporània

This special issue brings together a series of in-depth case studies of commemorative discourses and practices dedicated to some of the most important figures in contemporary Catalan literature from the beginning of the 19th century onwards, which contributed to transform selected writers (including Antoni Capmany, Jaume Balmes, Jacint Verdaguer, Àngel Guimerà and Josep Maria de Sagarra, as well as female authors, such as Josepa Massanés, Mercè Rodoreda, Anna Murià, Maria Aurèlia Cap-many and Montserrat Roig) into collective memory sites for the Catalan community. It aims to contribute critically to the burgeoning international scholarship on “cultural saints”, that is, the (generally male) writers, artists and intellectuals marked out as representative of cultural-national community identities in the age of consolidation of the nation-state. The bodies and corpora of the symbolic figures and cultural icons examined across the nine articles commissioned and collected here both served to confer legitimacy on diverse projects and agents in the public sphere and were the site of sometimes heightened debate over contested cultural memory narratives. In other words, they show the ways in which Catalan commemorative practices and processes are both a vehicle for the construction of a distinctive community imaginary as well as reflecting the divisions and dissensus between different agents and sub-groups, according to social, political, geographical, linguistic, generational and gender affiliation, among other factors.

"Tinc talent. Sé que tinc talent!": figures autorials al teatre de les dramaturgues catalanes del segle XXI

The gradual normalization of female authorship in 21st-century Catalan theater prompts us to examine the impact of the notion of authorship on the creative output of female playwrights. Authorial studies, along with recent feminist analyses, offer paths for addressing these inquiries by delving into how the concept of the author is socially constructed and how it influences the reception of artistic works. Drawing from the works of Dominique Maingueneau, Christine Planté, Meri Torras Francès, and Aina Pérez Fontdevila, this article undertakes the analysis of three plays that incor­porate female authorial figures in their narratives: Cabaret diabòlic (2003) by Beth Escu­dé, La indiana (2007) by Àngels Aymar, and Màtria (2017) by Carla Rovira. The female author characters in these works navigate the canonical representation of the author, highlighting its gender-exclusive nature and deconstructing its most prominent attrib­utes. These authorial figures serve as mechanisms of self-legitimization while simulta­neously championing female authors of the past.

Gender Differences in Citation Rate: An Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials in Nephrology High-Impact Journals Over Two Decades.

Historically, women's scientific contributions have been under-recognized. We investigated whether the number of citations, a key metric used for academic promotions and scientific productivity, differs in nephrology high impact publications based on author's gender. We identified randomized clinical trials (RCTs) from 2000-2021 in ten high impact journals. We assessed author gender, citations, h-index, m-index, years active publishing, education, and grant funding. The main predictor of interest was the gender of the first author. The main outcome was the standardized citation count for analysis of the selected publications. Additionally, we evaluated standardized author citation counts using the author, rather than paper. Among the selected publications, women were first authors of 65 (17.1%) and men of 315 manuscripts (82.9%). In crude analyses, publications with male first authors had a significantly higher median number of standardized citations (14 vs. 10, P=0.01). Adjusted analyses revealed, the m-index (β=29.48, P≤0.01) and journal impact factor (β=0.78, P<0.001) were significantly associated with the standardized citation index. In contrast, neither the gender of the first author (βmale gender=1.42, P=0.71) nor of the last author (βmale gender=8.89, P=0.38) were significantly associated with the standardized citations. Similarly, in adjusted analyses based on author profiles, male authorship was not significantly associated with the standardized author citation number (βmale gender=-7.79, P=0.08). Our study highlights marked disparities in the overall number of women publishing high impact nephrology trials and the number of papers with women scientists as first authors of high impact trials in the nephrology literature. Although crude citation rates were lower in papers with female first authors, the gender of the first author was not independently associated with citation metrics. Addressing gender disparities in academic recognition requires nuanced approaches extending beyond authorship and a broader focus on complex factors that influence academic recognition and scientific contributions.

First author gender equality trends in publication of mitochondrial neuro gastrointestinal encephalopathy-MNGIE disease

Mitochondrial neuro gastrointestinal encephalopathy (MNGIE) is a rare autosomal recessive genetic condition caused mainly by thymidine phosphorylates (TP) deficiency and TYMP mutations. Gender equality in scientific publishing is crucial for fostering inclusive practices and promoting diversity in research. This research article conducted a bibliometric analysis using PubMed as the primary data source. The analysis focused on studying the trends and patterns of first author gender equality in the publication of MNGIE disease. The methodology involved data collection, article screening, gender determination using the Namsor app, statistical analysis using R software, and visualization of findings through graphs created with DataWrapper. Our study utilized PubMed as the primary data source, covering the period from 1993 to 2022, and included 224 articles. The findings revealed that 57.6% of first authors were male, while 42.4% were female. Furthermore, the analysis of gender trends based on countries revealed that the Netherlands had the most favorable gender ratio. It revealed a significant association present between the first author’s gender and country. Additionally, selected journals exhibited a favorable gender ratio, with a 1:1 female-to-male ratio in nine out of ten journals examined. ARIMA model predicted that by 2027, approximately 160 publications would have male whereas around 120 publications would have female first authors. Our study highlights the gender discrepancies in first authorship within the context of MNGIE publications and provides insights into the representation of women in medical research. Efforts should be made to address these inequalities and promote gender equality in scientific publishing.