Who are we now? A demographic assessment of three evolution societies.

Scientific societies have the potential to catalyze support for communities that have been historically excluded from science. Many of these societies have formed committees to propose and administer initiatives to promote the career and well-being of their members, with a special emphasis on racial and ethnic minorities. Yet, these societies are rarely armed with data to inform their proposals. Three of the evolution societies (American Society of Naturalists, "ASN"; Society of Systematic Biologists, "SSB"; Society for the Study of Evolution, "SSE") have also formed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committees in the last few years. As a first step in determining the needs of the societies, these committees collected data on the demographic characteristics of the societies' constituents by surveying the attendants of the Evolution 2019 meeting. Here, we report the proportions for different demographic groups in attendance at the meeting and compare these proportions to the demographics of recipients of Ph.D. degrees either in evolutionary biology or in the broader life sciences, as well as population demographics of the USA. Our results indicate that historically excluded groups are still underrepresented across US-based evolutionary biology professional societies. We explore whether demographic composition differs at different professional stages and find that representation for women and LGBTQ+ members decreases as the career stage progresses. We also find some evidence for heterogeneity across societies in terms of racial composition. Finally, we discuss the caveats and limitations of our procedures. Our results will serve to inform future efforts to collect demographic data at the society levels, which should in turn be used to design and implement evidence-based initiatives for inclusion and equity. This report should be a starting point for systematic efforts to characterize the ever-changing representation in evolutionary biology and to work toward the inclusion of all groups.

Trends and Perspectives for Dermatological Research in Europe: An Abstract Title Analysis of ESDR and IID Congresses 2010-2019.

To better understand and interpret the trends in cutaneous research, we carried out a network analysis of all the titles of the submitted abstracts of the annual meetings of the European Society of Dermatological Research (ESDR), including the International Investigative Dermatology (IID) meetings between 2010 and 2019. Network analysis is a data science tool to process, analyze, and visualize big sets of data. As expected, psoriasis was the frontrunner in each of the annual meetings, followed by dermatitis and melanoma. Interestingly, alopecia, acne, squamous cell carcinoma, pruritus, basal cell carcinoma, and hidradenitis suppurativa were among the next most frequently named diseases and/or terms. We also looked at diversity to assess how broad the interest of the submitting community is and to identify whether "blockbusters" such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis expand in expense of other interests. In contrast to our expectations, the diversity of submissions to the ESDR annual meetings remained high over the 10 years of our observation period. Interestingly, the diversity increased in the years of the IID, indicating an outreach to other research areas worldwide compared with the ESDR meetings. This is true for both 2013 in Edinburgh, UK, and 2018 in Orlando, USA. During these meetings, this rise in diversity was associated with a relative decrease of the three most often named diseases. Network analysis thus may be a useful tool for research societies like the ESDR to identify trends and allocate resources such as reviewers and sessions accordingly. In addition, it can serve as quality control monitoring whether the ESDR continues to offer a platform for all researchers in cutaneous biology or implements or focuses on emerging fields.

Parenting Through Academia as a SICB Member.

The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) has made tremendous improvements to their annual meeting in an effort to promote inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility to all scientists. However, within academia as an institution overall, many scientists face personal challenges that directly compete with the rigorous culture considered a requirement for success as an academic. Among these challenges is balancing parenthood with academic responsibilities, such as conference attendance and productivity. Herein, we present a report of the survey administered to the members of SICB and from discussion held during the Parenting through Academia workshop at the 2020 annual meeting. We hope that this information brings to the Society an opportunity for open collegial discussion, mentorship, and community building, and sheds light on new strategies that could be undertaken to support not only parents, but SICB membership as a whole.

Public Discussion Affects Question Asking at Academic Conferences.

Women are under-represented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Despite the recent emphasis on diversity in STEM, our understanding of what drives differences between women and men scientists remains limited. This, in turn, limits our ability to intervene to level the playing field. To quantify the representation and participation of women and men at academic meetings in human genetics, we developed high-throughput and crowd-sourced approaches focused on question-asking behavior. Question asking is one voluntary and self-initiated scientific activity we can measure. Here we report that women ask fewer questions than expected regardless of their representation in talk audiences. We present evidence that external barriers affect the representation of women in STEM. However, differences in question-asking behavior suggest that internal factors also impact women's participation. We then examine the effects of specific interventions and show that wide public discussion of the relative under-participation of women in question-and-answer sessions alters question-asking behavior. We suggest that engaging the community in such projects promotes visibility of diversity issues at academic meetings and allows for efficient data collection that can be used to further explore and understand differences in conference participation.

Current status of site-specific cancer registry system for the clinical researches: aiming for future contribution by the assessment of present medical care.

BACKGROUND: The current status of site-specific cancer registry has not been elucidated, but sufficient system is found in some societies. The purpose of this study was to clear the present condition of site-specific cancer registries in Japan and to suggest for the improvement. METHODS: The questionnaire was conducted by the study group of the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. It consisted of 38 questions, conflicts of interest, clinical research method, informed consent and funding for registry. We distributed this questionnaire to 28 academic societies, which had published the clinical practice guideline(s) assessed under Medical Information Network Distribution Service (MINDS). RESULTS: The concept of the importance in assessment for medical quality by the data of the site-specific cancer registry was in good consensus. But the number of the society with the mature registry was limited. The whole-year registry with the scientific researches in the National Clinical Database (NCD) and in the Translational Research Informatics Center (TRI) might seem to be in success, because assured enhancement may be estimated. Now, academic societies have the structural factors, i.e., the financial limitation in the registry maintenance and the data analysis, and in the difficulty of employment of the researchers with skill and talent. CONCLUSIONS: To manage the site-specific cancer registry effectively, the scientific registry system will be essentially important. Each academic society had much experienced highly qualified clinical researches in past. Accordingly, the scientific suggestion and co-operation should be of great importance for the improvement.

Spanish National Oncological Research Center (CNIO): a bibliometric portrait

Introduction: Madrid’s CNIO (Spanish National Oncological Research Center) ranks among the three first institutions in the world, specifically dedicated to cancer research. CNIO research mainly focuses on three aspects: use of stem cells to fix problematic cancer damage, searches for genes that cause cancer disease, and use of drug design to manage oncological disorders. Objectives: The main goal of this study is to determine the effectiveness of the ‘translation’ of basic discoveries generated at this cancer research center, into new interventions aimed at preventing and treating various types of cancer, with bibliometric criteria. Methods: A corpus of published articles and citations received by CNIO between 1998 and 2016 has been retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) database. Bibliometric indicators considered here are: citation practices, use of journals on the basis of their impact factors, scientific literature citing CNIO publications, and international connectedness of CNIO researchers. Results: A total of 3510 articles were published by CNIO between 1998 and 2016, 23% of which in journals with impact factors between 10 and 15 and above 15. Along the same period, the institution received 135,769 citations published in more than 5800 journals, where the most important citing journals were the Plos One with 3.6% of all the citing articles, Oncotarget with 1.8%, and Scientific Reports with 1.2%. The highest number of citations was 18,005 in 2007; in terms of average citation rate, the first ranked CNIO research program was in the area of experimental therapeutics (77.79%), followed by molecular oncology (68.1%). This position was provided by the active growth in citation to the articles whose themes are related to the problems of the consequences of the design of preclinical drug candidates and the study of oncological disorders. Conclusions: From this study on a number of bibliometric characteristics of the Spanish National Oncological Research Center (CNIO), we conclude that the publication activity (since 2006 its scientific production has increased in about 83%), the number of high-quality journals used per year, the high influence, and impact of the journals and organizations citing the institution, consolidate its image as a top-notch oncological research center

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How academically productive are endocrine surgeons in the United States?

BACKGROUND: Many surgical departments in the United States lack endocrine surgery faculty. Although endocrine surgeons can provide worthwhile clinical services, it is unclear how they contribute to the overall academic mission of the department. The present study aims to evaluate the academic productivity of endocrine surgeons, as defined by the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons (AAES) membership, when compared with other academic surgical faculty. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An established database of 4081 surgical department faculty was used for this study. This database includes surgical faculty of the top 50 National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded universities and faculty from five outstanding hospital-based surgical departments. Academic metrics including publication, citations, H-index, and NIH funding were obtained using publically available data from websites. The AAES membership status was gathered from the online membership registry. RESULTS: A total of 110 AAES members were identified in this database, accounting for 2.7% of this population. Overall, the AAES members outperformed other academic surgical faculty with respect to publications (66 ± 94 versus 28 ± 91, P < 0.001), publication citations (1430 ± 3432 versus 495 ± 2955, P < 0.001), and H-index (19 ± 18 versus 10 ± 13, P < 0.001). In addition, the AAES members were more likely to have former/current NIH funding and hold divisional or departmental leadership positions than their non-AAES member colleagues. CONCLUSIONS: Based on these data, the AAES members excelled with respect to publications, citations, and research funding compared with nonendocrine surgical faculty. These results demonstrate that endocrine surgeons can contribute enormously to the overall academic mission. Therefore, more surgical departments in the United States should consider establishing an endocrine surgery program.

Participation, representation, and shared experiences of women scholars in biological anthropology.

American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) membership surveys from 1996 and 1998 revealed significant gender disparities in academic status. A 2014 follow-up survey showed that gender equality had improved, particularly with respect to the number of women in tenure-stream positions. However, although women comprised 70% of AAPA membership at that time, the percentage of women full professors remained low. Here, we continue to consider the status of women in biological anthropology by examining the representation of women through a quantitative analysis of their participation in annual meetings of the AAPA during the past 20 years. We also review the programmatic goals of the AAPA Committee on Diversity Women's Initiative (COD-WIN) and provide survey results of women who participated in COD-WIN professional development workshops. Finally, we examine the diversity of women's career paths through the personal narratives of 14 women biological anthropologists spanning all ranks from graduate student to Professor Emeritus. We find that over the past 20 years, the percentage of women first authors of invited symposia talks has increased, particularly in the sub-disciplines of bioarchaeology, genetics, and paleoanthropology. The percentage of women first authors on contributed talks and posters has also increased. However, these observed increases are still lower than expected given the percentage of graduate student women and women at the rank of assistant and associate professor. The personal narratives highlight first-hand the impact of mentoring on career trajectory, the challenges of achieving work-life satisfaction, and resilience in the face of the unexpected. We end with some suggestions for how to continue to improve equality and equity for women in biological anthropology.

Doctoral training in clinical psychology across 23 years: Continuity and change.

OBJECTIVE: Doctoral training in clinical psychology has undergone substantial changes in recent decades, especially with the increasing heterogeneity of training models and graduate students. To document these changes, we analyzed program, student, and faculty characteristics of American Psychological Association (APA)-accredited clinical psychology programs over a 23-year span. METHOD: We surveyed directors of clinical training about their doctoral programs every 2 years from 1991 to 2013, securing 90%-98% response rates. With minimal exceptions, the survey questions remained constant. RESULTS: Percentages of female and racial/ethnic minority students continued to grow, such that women now comprise about three quarters of trainees and ethnic minorities about one quarter. There has been a decisive shift in faculty theoretical orientation toward cognitive/cognitive-behavioral and away from psychodynamic/psychoanalytic. Internship match rates were relatively high and stable until the early 2010s but have recently rebounded. CONCLUSION: We discuss the limitations of these survey results and their implications for the future of doctoral training in clinical psychology.

Producción científica de los presidentes de las sociedades científicas de estudiantes de medicina en Perú / No disponible

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