A bibliometric analysis of the gender gap in the authorship of leading medical journals

The publishing of medical research papers has traditionally been dominated by men. To better understand whether gender diversity in the authorship of research papers has changed recently, we analyzed over 10,000 articles published between 2010 and 2019 in five top medical journals. Usually, the first author is recognized as the leading contributor, whereas the last author supervises the study. We found that there were fewer women in senior positions compared to first author positions. The percentage of women as authors varied across countries. Over time, the gender gap decreased, but at different rates depending on the author’s position and country. Keywords selected by researchers to describe their work varied between genders. Our findings show progress in gender representation, but with country-specific differences. This study can be used as a model to track gender representation in other journals and time periods.