Leadership through a gender lens: Disparities in Dental Research

This study aimed to analyze the 100 most-cited papers in Dentistry, with a focus on female leadership in dental research. Papers were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS- CC) in the category 'Dentistry, Oral Surgery & Medicine'. Gender was assessed through WoS-CC, Scopus, ResearchGate, social media, institutional websites, and software that assigns gender according to first names (https://genderapi.io). Characteristics of authors in leadership roles were retrieved, such as affiliation, publication history, citations, H factor, and i500. The 100 most-cited papers in Dentistry were authored by 394 researchers, 326 (82.7%) men, and 68 (17.3%) women - there were 4.8 male authors for each female. Among the lead authors, there were 11.3 males for each female. Among female senior authors, there were 7 males for each female. Among lead/senior authors of the 100 most-cited papers (first and last authors, respectively), 18 were women. There was an increase in the participation of women in the top cited papers regardless of authorship role across the six decades, with a peak of two female authors in the first decade of the 21st century. For female authors in leadership roles, their publication history shows the time between their first and last papers in WoS-CC ranged from 4 to 42 years for lead authors and 1 to 39 years for senior authors. Women were found to be largely underrepresented as leaders of the 100 most-cited papers, highlighting pervasive gender inequalities in dental research publications.