Abstract 4371741: Gender Differences in Authorship of Leading Interventional Cardiology Publications

Abstract

Background: Despite progress in the representation of female cardiology trainees and physicians over time, women remain underrepresented in published cardiology literature. Research Question: Our study investigates whether gender disparities exist in authorship among the leading interventional cardiology publications over a recent ten-year period. Methods: Using interventional cardiology-associated PubMed-MeSH terms, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in PubMed from 2013 to 2022, focusing on the top eleven cardiology and interventional cardiology journals by impact factor. First authors and last authors were identified, and their genders were determined from a database of name-to-gender mappings ( Gender API; gender-api.com ). Binomial and chi-square tests were performed. Results: We identified 13,449 articles on PubMed which met the inclusion criteria. Female authors represented 16.1% of all first authors and 12.5% of all last authors, which was significantly different from the proportion of male authors (p<0.001). Interventional cardiology journals demonstrated a greater bias towards male first and last authors (84.9% and 88.8%, respectively) compared to general cardiology journals (81.5% and 84.4%; p<0.001). Between 2013-2017 and 2018-2022, the proportion of female first authors significantly increased over time (p<0.001), while no significant change was observed in gender representation among last authors (p=0.306). Publications with a female last author were more likely to have a female first author compared to those with a male last author (22.7% versus 15.2%, respectively, p<0.001). Conclusions: We analyzed the first and last author genders of interventional cardiology publications in high-impact cardiology journals over a decade and found that women remain underrepresented in both authorship positions. This effect was more pronounced in publications from interventional cardiology journals and in those with male last authors. The increase in female first authorship over time suggests progress at the early-career level, but the lack of change in last authorship reflects ongoing gaps in senior academic representation. Additional work is needed to address these disparities and identify strategies to increase female representation in interventional cardiology research, which may help elucidate barriers to gender diversity in cardiology leadership, recruitment, and academic advancement.