Gender Differences in Authorship of Critical Care Literature

Gender gaps exist in academic leadership positions in critical care. Peer-reviewed publications are crucial to career advancement, and yet little is known regarding gender differences in authorship of critical care research. To evaluate gender differences in authorship of critical care literature. We used a validated database of author gender to analyze authorship of critical care articles indexed in PubMed between 2008 and 2018 in 40 frequently cited journals. High-impact journals were defined as those in the top 5% of all journals. We used mixed-effects logistic regression to evaluate the association of senior author gender with first and middle author gender, as well as association of first author gender with journal impact factor. Among 18,483 studies, 30.8% had female first authors, and 19.5% had female senior authors. Female authorship rose slightly over the last decade (average annual increases of 0.44% [