Women's representation in emergency medicine journals across two decades: 2000-2019

The primary aim was to determine women's representation as authors in emergency medicine journals in various authorship positions over the last 20 years. The secondary aim was to compare the two decades to analyze the development over time.

We conducted a retrospective bibliometric analysis of three emergency medicine journals from the online archives of 2000-2019.

We analyzed a total of 7939 original research and review articles. Female authorships at the first (25,8%), last (18,7%), and corresponding (21,6%) positions were limited, despite the relatively high presence rate (72,5%). Women authored 13,1% of all single-authored publications. When the number of authors increased, the odds for women as co-authors increased. However, the odds for last and corresponding authorship decreased, while the odds for the first authorship remained unchanged. When two decades were compared, we found that proportions of women as first and corresponding authorship increased ([23,8% vs. 27,0%] p = 0.001 and [20,0% vs. 22,6%] p = 0.228, respectively) while the representation as the last author remained unchanged ([19,4% vs 18,3%] p = 0.006). The presence of women in any authorship position also increased significantly ([66,1% vs. 76,5%] p = 0.000) across two decades, with similar trends for the different journals studied. However, the yearly analysis shows that women's representation follows a fluctuating pattern with a minimal increase. When analyzing specific journals, we found that the increase in female authors as first and corresponding authors was limited to Academic Emergency Medicine ([24,7% vs 34,5%] p = 0.000 and [21,4% vs 32,1%] p = 0.000).

Results of this study are promising in showing that the representation of women in emergency medicine publications is rising during the recent decade. Although the academic gender gap has not been closed, steps taken for gender equality in academic emergency medicine are clearly notable.