Women occupying preferential authorship positions for articles in the journal Emergencias: an analysis of authorship during the last decade

Objective.

To analyze gender disparity in scientific productivity reflected by the authorship of articles in the journal Emergencias over the past decade.

Methods.

Retrospective longitudinal study. We included articles in all issues published between January 2011 and December 2020, analyzing the number of authors, their gender, article type, year of publication, and preferential authorship credit (first author, corresponding author, and last author positioning). The percentages of women named in each position were calculated, and the trend over time was analyzed.

Results.

A total of 1240 articles signed by 5213 authors were collected; a woman was named in 1889 of the cases (36.2%). A woman was the first author of 384 articles (31%), the corresponding author of 352 (28.4%), and the last author of 358 (28.9%). The number of female authors of original research articles or meta-analyses tended to increase over time (P = .047), but no statistically significant gender trends were observed in the authorship of editorials, narrative reviews, scientific letters or short communications, letters to the editor, or any other publication category.

Conclusions.

The publication of articles by women in Emergencias has increased over the past decade. However, women continue to author fewer articles than men.