Gender Disparities in Citations and Altmetric Attention Score in Oncology

Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) is a measure of the quantity of attention that a scholarly work receives, and evidence about gender gaps in AAS in oncology is lacking. Our objective was to analyze potential disparities in the AAS within oncology by comparing research publications authored by women first and last authors with those authored by men. Secondarily, we aimed to quantify the extent of over-/undercitation by gender.

The initial data set was compiled from the Altmetric database through Application Programming Interface (API) using oncology-related search terms. Author gender categories were assigned on the basis of the Gender Guesser API. For example, those with first and last authors labeled woman were categorized as woman first author/woman last author (WW). Over-/undercitation was calculated using observed citations and expected citations. Analyses were completed both for the oncology literature as a whole and for prominent subspecialty peer-reviewed journals.

Our search yielded 652,834 articles published between January 1, 2009, and January 31, 2024. For AAS, women in the first author position had a 15.2% lower score compared with men counterparts and women in the last author position had an 8.3% lower score than men (P < .01 for both). Although the proportion of WW authors in oncology publications increased over time, the man first author/man last author combination was overcited (mean citation percentage difference [MCD] = +16.2%), whereas WW was undercited (MCD = -7.7%). There was variation in both proportion of WW papers and over-/undercitation among oncologic subspecialties.

Significant gender disparities in citation rates and AAS exist across various fields within oncology. This highlights a systemic issue where woman-authored research is undercited and receives less attention compared with man-authored work, with the potential to affect career advancement, funding opportunities, and academic recognition.