RESUMEN
Objective The North American Skull Base Society (NASBS) annual conference brings together skull base researchers from surgical and nonsurgical fields. Our objective was to quantify the contributions of the authors by gender, who presented their work at NASBS and were subsequently published in the Journal of Neurological Surgery Part B: Skull Base . Methods Oral and poster abstracts presented at the NASBS annual meeting from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2020 were extracted from the Journal of Neurological Surgery Part B: Skull Base. The genderize.io Web application programming interface was utilized to determine authorship gender. A minority of first and last authors had departmental affiliations listed; a subgroup analysis was performed of these authors. Results Female gender was assigned to 498 (17.8%) of the 2,798 first authors and 269 (9.7%) of the 2,762 last authors. Female authorship has consistently increased over the last decade. Representation was higher in otolaryngology (23.3% of first authors, 12.1% of last authors; p = 0.018) than neurosurgery (13.5% of first authors, 4.3% of last authors; p = 0.004). Female researchers were not less likely than their male counterparts to receive prestigious oral presentations. Of the 52 total countries represented, 20 (38.5%) had at least one female first author. Representation varied dramatically between countries. Conclusion The NASBS' efforts have undoubtedly contributed to these impressive strides toward gender parity. More work is needed to ensure that the best and the brightest, regardless of background, continue to contribute to skull base surgery research.
RESUMEN
Objective The North American Skull Base Society (NASBS) multidisciplinary annual conference hosts skull base researchers from across the globe. We hypothesized that the work presented at the NASBS annual conference would reveal diverse authorship teams in terms of specialty and geography. Methods In this retrospective review, abstracts presented at the NASBS annual meeting and subsequently published in the Journal of Neurological Surgery Part B: Skull Base between 01/01/2011 and 12/31/2020 were collected. Variables extracted included year, type of presentation, and author names and affiliations. Statistical analyses were performed with SPSS V23.0 with p -values less than 0.05 considered significant. Geographic heat maps were created to assess author distribution, and a network analysis was performed to display authorship collaboration between geographic regions. Results Of 3,312 published abstracts, 731 (22.1%) had an author with an affiliation outside of the United States. Fifty-seven distinct countries were represented. Three-hundred twenty-four abstracts (9.8%) had authorship teams representing at least 2 different countries. The top five US states by abstract representation were Pennsylvania, California, New York, Ohio, and Minnesota. A majority of authors reported neurosurgery affiliations (56.7% first authors, 53.2% last authors), closely followed by otolaryngology (39.1% first authors, 41.5% last authors). No solo authors and very few (3.3%) of the first authors reported a departmental affiliation outside of otolaryngology or neurosurgery. Conclusions Authors from many countries disseminate their work through poster and oral presentations at the NASBS annual meeting. Ten percent of abstracts were the product of international collaboration. Most authors were affiliated with a neurosurgery or otolaryngology department.
RESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: This study was performed to compare authorship trends, by gender, in the neurosurgical oncology literature. METHODS: Complete author listings for neurosurgical oncology articles published between 1944 and 2021 in five top neuro-oncology journals were extracted from the PubMed database and journal websites on December 2, 2021. Author gender was characterized with the web application programming interface (API) genderize.io. The statistical significance (p < 0.05) of time-, journal-, and gender-based differences was determined by independent-samples t-test, chi-square test, and/or Fisher's exact test. RESULTS: A total of 14,020 articles were written by 67,115 unique authors occupying 97,418 authorship spots. The gender for 80,030 authorship positions (82.2%) was successfully characterized. Male authors were significantly more likely than the female authors to have a first-author publication, have a last-author publication, and have authored multiple articles within the data set. Among authors who published in multiple different years (n = 11,532), women had a shorter time window of publishing (5.46 vs 6.75 years between first and last publication: mean difference [MD] 1.28 [95% CI 1.06-1.50] years, p < 0.001). During this window, however, they were slightly more productive than the men, based on the mean number of publications per year (1.06 vs 1.01 articles: MD 0.05 [95% CI 0.02-0.09] articles, p = 0.002). The percentage of female authors on each neuro-oncology research team has increased by 3.3% (95% CI 2.6%-3.9%) per decade to a mean of 26.5% in the 2020s. Having a female last author was positively associated with having a female first author (OR 2.57 [95% CI 2.29-2.89]) and a higher proportion of women on the research team overall. The percentages of female first and last authors increased at significantly higher rates in medically oriented journals than in surgically oriented journals (first authors: 0.72% [95% CI 0.58%-0.87%] vs 0.36% [95% CI 0.30%-0.42%] per year, p < 0.001; and last authors: 0.50% [95% CI 0.38%-0.62%] vs -0.03% [95% CI -0.10% to 0.05%] per year, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Female authorship in top neuro-oncology journals has increased since the 1940s, with female-led teams showing greater gender diversity. However, female researchers lag behind their male counterparts in quantity of published research and are less likely to hold first or last authorship positions. This difference is more pronounced in the three neurosurgical oncology journals than in the two medical neuro-oncology journals, which may reflect the relatively low female representation in neurosurgery relative to medical oncology. Collectively, these trends have meaningful implications for career advancement, which is often dependent on academic productivity.
