Diversity in Plastic Surgery Authorship: A 14-Year Analysis of 2688 Articles Published in Plastic and Reconstructive...

Publication in peer-reviewed journals is a duty and privilege. It is essential to the advancement of evidence-based medicine and often used as a proxy for academic achievement, contributing to decisions around promotion in academia. Within plastic surgery, authors have historically been male surgeons affiliated with academic institutions, lacking representation of women, private practice, medical students, and international collaboration. This study analyzes differences in authors' gender, practice affiliation, degree of education, and international collaboration in articles published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, which was chosen as the representative journal given its high impact factor (3.946) and consistent ranking as the number one journal in plastic surgery worldwide.

A list of Breast, Cosmetic, and Hand/Peripheral Nerve articles published between 2006 and 2019 was compiled from the online archive of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Demographic author characteristics were recorded, and statistical analyses were performed to identify trends over time.

A total of 2688 articles were analyzed. The proportion of articles written by female authors in the Breast category, authors in private practice with academic affiliation in the Cosmetic section, and U.S. collaboration with other countries increased over time (p = 0.038, p = 0.029, p < 0.001, respectively). First authors with bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees have also been contributing increasingly.

This analysis revealed increasing demographic heterogeneity of authors in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery over time, with increasing contributions from women, surgeons in private practice with academic affiliation, medical students, and international collaborations. The Journal is capturing contributions from an increasingly diverse authorship, consistent with the changing demographics of plastic surgeons.