Trends in first-author retention in ASH accepted works from 2019–2024

Abstract

Abstract Background: Continued engagement in hematology research is crucial for continued improvement of patient outcomes and is an important part of career development for many clinicians. Nonetheless, it can be difficult for clinicians of marginalized groups. This study evaluates the longitudinal retention of first authors at ASH from 2019-2024 as a measure of research engagement and evaluates the effect of different factors on retention. Methods: We extracted ASH first-author data (2019-2024) from the ASH website, including first author, submission type (limited to oral abstracts, poster abstracts, and online-only publications), and presentation subcategory (divided into nine different subjects per ASH). Gender was assigned using Namsor, a public web-tool, in tandem with manual prediction by physical presentation for names that could not be predicted by the web-tool. This data was passed through an original Python program to identify first-author one-year retention (e.g. 2019-2020, 2020-2021, etc.), as well as identify the effects of year presented, submission type, gender, and presentation subject on retention. Excess gender retention differences were also calculated based on baseline gender disparities in submissions. Results were confirmed through manual analysis. Results: The period with the highest one-year first-author retention was during 2021 to 2022, with 26.5% retention (1094 of 4123 first-authors). First-author retention remained consistently high in other intervals ranging, from 23-26%, except in 2019-2020 where 17% of first-authors were retained (861/5017; Two-proportion test comparing 2019-2020 and 2021-2022: p < 0.001). Focusing on specific submission types, poster sessions had the highest average one-year retention of 18.4%, whereas online-only publications had the lowest one-year retention averaging 9.2%. (Two-proportion test: p < 0.001). Regarding presentation subcategory, we found that retention was highest in Hematologic Malignancies at 23.2% (e.g. 771 of 3074 first-authors in 2024 presented in 2023 in this category). Retention was lowest in the Transfusion Medicine category at 5.9%, as only 3 of 51 first-authors in 2024 presented the prior year. Focusing on gender, we found that 55.7% (3092 of 5548) of retained first-authors were male across all years. When considering that the baseline male first-author representation was 51.6% for all ASH abstracts over 2019-2024 (15198 of 29583 abstracts), this reflects an unexpected statistically significant excess male retention of 4.1% (Two-proportion test: p < 0.001). Retention differences were more pronounced by presentation type. Oral abstracts had the highest male retention, averaging 63.8% compared to oral presentations at 60.3% and poster sessions at 55.4%. Excess male retention was also highest in oral abstracts, 9.9% over the baseline male representation of 50.4%. Poster sessions had the lowest excess male retention, 3.8% higher than expected. When analyzing by subcategory, first-author retention was male-dominated in the fields of Leukocytes, Inflammation, and Immunology (62.8% male) and Gene Therapies, Chemical Biology, and Emerging Diagnostics (67.7% male); whereas was female-dominated in the field Red Cell Physiology and Disorders (58.9% female). Conclusions: First-author retention has remained stable over recent years, with the highest retention specifically in authors of poster sessions. Differences in retention by presentation type and subcategory may be due to factors such as varying competitiveness and the total number of submissions in each group. Despite baseline gender disparities in authorship, there were additional gaps in retention among women across specific presentation types and research fields. These findings highlight some of the specific barriers to sustained academic involvement among women in hematology research which could be addressed.