(IP119) Gender Disparities in Authorship in the Journal of Vascular Surgery

Objectives: Academic surgery has long demonstrated gender differences in training opportunities and career advancement. Publications and research involvement play a key role in career advancement at academic centers. In more recent years, women have been pursuing vascular surgery careers in increasing numbers. Our study sought to analyze trends in authorship between men and women in the Journal of Vascular Surgery (JVS) to gain insight into this disparity over time within the field of vascular surgery.

Methods: We used the PubMed iCite database to extract all author names from journal articles published in JVS between 2002 and 2023. The Harvard World Gender Name Dictionary (WGND 2.0) was used to assign a gender to each author; names that could not be found were marked as unknown or unidentified. We then analyzed the set of authors to elucidate trends in percentages of women, men, and unidentified gender first and last authors over time.

Results: A total of 11,903 articles containing 63,908 names were analyzed. Among all authors, 47,996 (75.1%) were men, 12,439 (19.5%) were women, and 3,472 (5.4%) were unknown. Articles had an average of 5 authors. Men made up the majority of first authors (8,707; 73.2%) and last authors (9,740; 81.8%). Women had higher rates of first authorship (2,310; 19.4%) than last authorship (1,434; 12.1%), and more commonly middle authorship (8,695; 22%). Women as first authors rose steadily over the study period, with a steeper increase in female authorship in the past decade; female last authors rose at a consistent slow rate over time (Figure 1).

Conclusions: These results demonstrate positive trends toward more inclusive authorship in research within JVS. However, female last authorship lags behind the growth of female authors in general; as well as the growth of women in vascular surgery. This may reflect increasing parity in the genders of trainees (who are more likely to be first authors) as well as the additional academic barriers and a generational lag to equality among senior authors.