Female author representation differs between journals from the United States of America, Europe, and Asia: a 10-year comparison of five medical disciplines

To provide information for targeted support of female scientists, the objective of this study was to evaluate how female authors are represented in journals of five medical disciplines with varying rates of female physicians from the United States of America (USA), Europe, and Asia. For this retrospective bibliometric study 15 representative gynecologic, pediatric, radiologic, urologic, and surgical journals from the USA, Europe, and Asia were selected from the Web of Science database. From these, all n = 24182 publications of the years 2007/2008 and 2017/2018 were included. Gender and affiliations were assigned to first and senior authors using a software (Gender API, Passau, Germany), native speakers, and a web-based search. For statistics mixed logistic and multinomial logistic regression were applied. In pediatrics, radiology, and urology, highest female first and senior author shares were consistently found in journals from the USA. In European journals proportions across all disciplines tripled (odds ratio 2.96 [95% CI 2.60–3.37], P