| Ref ID | 1286 |
| First Author | M.H. van Zuilen |
| Journal | JOURNAL OF GENERAL INTERNAL MEDICINE |
| Year Of Publishing | 2025 |
| URL | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-024-09140-8 |
| Keywords |
• General medical • Cochrane • Author |
| Problem(s) |
• Lack of diversity in review authorship teams |
| Article Type | Empirical |
| Article Subtype | Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review |
| First Author Country | United States |
| Aim | To examine the gender trends in authorship in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) for a 25-year period from 1996 to 2020. The authors hypothesised a higher proportion of women authors in the CDSR compared to what was reported for other high-impact factor publications. |
| Level of Investigation | Descriptive |
| Summary of Findings | From 8654 systematic reviews indexed in CDSR from 1996 to 2020. Among the 8653 published reviews, gender was determined for 39,855 of the 40,734 authors (97.8%). Although the percentage of women authors improved steadily across the five time periods with an increase of 43.3% (from 39.2 to 56.2%) for first authors, 41% (from 36.3 to 51.2%) for corresponding authors, there was only a 29.6% increase (from 30.7 to 39.8%) for senior authors, and 29.7% (from 38.4 to 49.8%) for all authors. The absolute increase in women authors was largest for first authors (17%) and smallest for senior authors (9.1%). For the 8404 publications with available data on both first and senior author gender, 42.4% of women and 31.8% of men first-author publications included a woman senior author. |
| Number of systematic reviews included | 8654 |
| Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed | 8653 |
| Treatment impacted | Not Applicable |
| Treatment impacted description | |
| Interpretation impacted | Not Applicable |
| Interpretation impacted description |