Trends in female surgeon authorship - The role of the middle author

The objective of this study was to compare middle authorships between male and female general surgeons in the United States.

A stratified random sample of American College of Surgeons general surgery fellows was identified. Relevant author demographic, affiliation, and publication metrics were collected and compared across cohorts to determine which demographics were prognostic for each outcome variable. The primary endpoint was the number of middle author papers between genders.

Males were more likely to enter into practice earlier (p<0.001), be fellowship-trained (p<0.001), obtain higher academic rank (p<0.001), and practice at more highly ranked academic institutions (p=0.019). Females had fewer middle author publications (p=0.044) and higher annual rates of first author publications (p=0.020) despite similar rates of total publications.

Female surgeons hold the middle author position less frequently than males despite similar total publication numbers. Reasons for this finding should be the target of future study.