Women ‘underrepresented as senior authors’

Women appear as authors on less than one-third of scientific articles across many journals over the last decade, and are heavily underrepresented among the mostly highly cited and prestigious articles, a study has found.

Just 29.8 per cent of 293,557 research articles categorised as life science, multidisciplinary, chemistry, and Earth and environmental between 2008 and 2016 had female authors, according to a study of articles published across 54 journals tracked by the Nature Index database.

Women were statistically far more likely to be listed as junior rather than senior authors on these articles, according to the study published in PLOS One on 2 January. Women accounted for just 18.1 per cent of last authorships, compared with 33.1 per cent of first authorships and 31.8 per cent of co-authorships.