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Female physicians and researchers seeking to enter the academic publishing arena consistently face fewer opportunities compared with their male counterparts.

Although tremendous strides in women’s rights have changed the world for working women over the past few generations, many inequities still exist throughout various industries, and the medical field is no exception. According to Yasmine S. Ali, MD, MSCI, female physicians and researchers seeking to enter the academic publishing arena consistently face fewer opportunities compared with their male counterparts.

In an article in JAMA Network Open that assessed the rate of women authorship in high-impact pediatric journals, authors found diminished authorship rates for women in all categories (scholarly to narrative) among first authors, final authors, and co-authors. Researchers found that women training to join the medical field more readily obtained the help of seasoned, academically published male mentors than women in their early or mid-careers. As such, the trainees mentioned above are more likely to have seasoned co-authors helping to publish their journal submissions than women who have already begun practicing in their medical careers.

Disparities also occur when examining journal citations, particularly those in high-impact journals. Authors of a 2021 JAMA Network Open study found that articles whose primary or senior authors were men had more citations than did articles whose primary and senior authors were women. What’s more, articles with men as both primary and senior authors were cited around 50% more than articles with female primary and senior authors.

Dr. Ali notes some key strategies that may help women in medicine achieve a higher success rate publishing in academic journals. Female physicians should ensure their submissions have gripping abstracts, given that many journal editors decide whether to move forward with reading submissions based on an abstract’s allure. Quality abstracts are organized, proofread, to the point, and offer interesting data interpretation. Dr. Ali also urges women in medicine to carefully adhere to the submission instructions set forth by each journal and to be ready to revise manuscripts that advance to the peer-review level.

Overcoming gender disparities in academic medicine requires a system-wide movement to overhaul biases and roadblocks that have pervaded the medical field for decades, inhibiting women’s upward mobility and success.