Female Authorship in Preclinical Cardiovascular Research: Temporal Trends and Influence on Experimental Design

In this analysis of 3,396 preclinical cardiovascular studies, women were first, senior, and both first and senior authors in 41.3%, 20.7%, and 11.0% of the studies, respectively. Female authorship increased over a 10-year period. However, the proportion of studies with first and senior authors of differing sex was low and stable, suggesting that segregation by sex in mentorship relationships exists and persists. Female authors were more likely to consider sex as a biological variable, but author sex was not associated with other measures of experimental rigor or research impact, indicating that women's underrepresentation was not due to differences in research capacity or impact.