Authorship Gender Equity: Oral Epidemiology & Dental Public Health Journals, 2017-2023

Objectives: While gender inequity in biomedical authorship has been widely reported, no studies to date describe gender balance in the oral epidemiology and dental public health literature. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the gender of first, second and senior authorship positions in the four major Oral Epidemiology/Dental Public Health Journals.
Methods: We conducted a bibliometric review of oral epidemiology and dental public health articles published in the four major oral epidemiology/ dental public health journals (Community Dentistry & Oral Epidemiology, Journal of Public Health Dentistry, JDR Clinical and Translational Research, and Community Dental Health) over the five-year period of January 2017 through December 2022. We categorized articles as either original research, systematic review, other type review, editorial, conference proceedings or letters, and two investigators independently identified the gender of all first, second and senior (last) authors. For each article, we also noted the number of authors.
Results: A total of 1471 articles were published in the four selected journals over the five-year period. Most articles (78.0%) presented original research, while systematic reviews (4.8%) other reviews (3.5%) and editorials (12.8%) comprised the majority of the remainder. The mean number of authors was 4.7 (sd 2.7). We found that 59.6% of first authors, 54.1% of second authors and 45.4% of senior authors were female.
Conclusions: During this recent period, while just over half (53.8%) of the assessed authorship positions were held by women, the distributions by position varied: females were more likely to be first or second authors but less likely to be the senior author.