The Impact of Women-Led Academic Collaborations in Plastic Surgery

Gender parity in overall academic productivity in plastic surgery has increased, likely driven by the greater proportion of women in plastic surgery residency. Given the crucial role of collaboration in research productivity and securing grant funding, it becomes imperative to investigate whether gender disparities affect collaboration for female authors in plastic surgery. In this study, we explore how gender influences academic collaboration among plastic surgeons, according to impact factor (IF), overall rates of collaboration, and the departments with which they collaborate.

PubMed was queried for all articles from academic plastic surgery programs between 2018 and 2023. Collaborative articles were defined as a plastic surgery senior author with at least one author who was not from the same plastic surgery department. The senior author affiliation was used to select articles from academic plastic surgery departments. The first and senior author's gender were determined using Gender-API, a validated approach to assigning gender based on first name. Associations with gender and research impact variables were assessed, including publishing journals and their IF. Gender predominance in a collaborating specialty was determined by the AAMC 2021 Physician Specialty Data Report.

A total of 21,068 articles were initially retrieved, 14,590 articles were reviewed after removal of duplicates, and 6525 articles qualified for inclusion. Gender-API was able to identify 98% of authors as male or female. A total of 17.2% of publications were led by female authors and 38.3% had a female first author (χ2 = 691.21, P < 0.0001). The proportions engaging in collaboration were similar, 18.3% and 37.9%, respectively. While female senior authors in plastic surgery have fewer publications (3.83 ± 7.31 vs 5.88 ± 11.1, P < 0.001) we found that the average journal IF was significantly greater in female-led articles (3.84 ± 6.11 vs 3.35 ± 4.60, P = 0.009) than in male led articles.Female senior authors were more likely to publish collaborations with specialties that had a higher proportion of women (χ2 = 5.30, P = 0.021); for example, 2.86% (n = 1) of collaborations with cardiothoracic surgery were with women (odds ratio = 0.130, P = 0.0138) and 35.6% (n = 5) of collaborations with endocrinology were with women (odds ratio = 2.38, P = 0.155).

We demonstrate the nuanced effect of collaboration on research productivity for female authors in plastic surgery. In particular, female plastic surgery senior authorship and overall collaboration coincides with the gender proportions in the field. Furthermore, female senior authors in plastic surgery published in significantly higher IF journals. Lastly, our work implies that female in-group networks of academic collaborations may serve a vital role in the professional connections for women in the predominately male field of plastic surgery. Future studies may compare these data to the plastic surgery articles published in earlier years.