Authorship diversity in hematology‐related Cochrane systematic reviews: Inequities in global representation

• Published in: Research and practice in thrombosis and haemostasis Vol. 6; no. 6; pp. e12778 - n/a
• Main Authors: Biswas, Jyotirmoy, Dhali, Arkadeep, Rathna, Roger B., D'Souza, Christopher
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01-08-2022; Elsevier Limited; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Elsevier
• Subjects: Authorship; Digital Object Identifier; Funding; Gender; Hematology; Research Letter; Scholarly publishing; Thrombosis; Israel; United Kingdom > UK; United States > US; China; Germany
• ISSN: 2475-0379; 2475-0379
• DOI: 10.1002/rth2.12778

First authors were mostly represented by Germany (n = 58, 41.7%), followed by the United Kingdom (n = 22, 15.8%), China (n = 14, 10%), United States of America (n = 8, 5.7%), and Israel (n = 8, 5.7%). A study by King et al. identified that men had more lead-authored publications than women, and almost twice as many total publications in the American Society of Hematology, Clinical Research Training Institute. 3 Another study by Siddiqui et al. showed that in investigating gender inequality in the National Institutes of Health funding for hematologic malignancies and cellular therapies, only 29% of the total grant was allocated to women principal investigators. 4 However, our study found that the representation of women in Cochrane reviews was significantly higher compared with other existing literature. Taskforces like Women in Hematology Working of the ASH are developing strategies to limit this imbalance by providing career development opportunities for women in hematology. 5 A similar initiative was taken by the editorial board of Research and Practice in Thrombosis and Haemostasis, a journal of the ISTH, where more women editors and editorial board members were appointed to minimize the gender gap in academic publishing. 6 These bold efforts resulted in increased gender representation of women. 7 Active capacity-building efforts are needed in several countries for advancing authorship diversity among academic hematologists involved with Cochrane.