Bibliometric analysis of authorship trends and collaboration dynamics over the past three decades of BONE's publication history

Abstract

The existence of a gender gap in academia has been a hotly debated topic over the past several decades. It has been argued that due to the gender gap, it is more difficult for women to obtain higher positions. Manuscripts serve as an important measurement of one's accomplishments within a particular field of academia. Here, we analyzed, over the past 3 decades, authorship and other trends in manuscripts published in BONE, one of the premier journals in the field of bone and mineral metabolism. For this study, one complete year of manuscripts was evaluated (e.g. 1985, 1995, 2005, 2015) for each decade. A bibliometric analysis was then performed of authorship trends for those manuscripts. Analyzed fields included: average number of authors per manuscript, numerical position of the corresponding author, number of institutions collaborating on each manuscript, number of countries involved with each manuscript, number of references, and number of citations per manuscript. Each of these fields increased significantly over the 30-year time frame (p < 10− 6). The gender of both the first and corresponding authors was identified and analyzed over time and by region. There was a significant increase in the percentage of female first authors from 23.4% in 1985 to 47.8% in 2015 (p = 0.001). The percentage of female corresponding authors also increased from 21.2% in 1985 to 35.4% in 2015 although it was not significant (p = 0.07). With such a substantial emphasis being placed on publishing in academic medicine, it is crucial to comprehend the changes in publishing characteristics over time and geographical region. These findings highlight authorship trends in BONE over time as well as by region. Importantly, these findings also highlight where challenges still exist.