Gender and Radiology Publication Productivity: An Examination of Academic Faculty From Four Health Systems in the United States

Objectives To compare male and female radiology faculty publication productivity metrics at four major academic centers. Materials and Methods All Radiology Department faculty members at four academic medical centers from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2015, were included. Publication metrics including total number of manuscripts published; h- and m-indices; number of publications where faculty member was listed as first, last, or sole author; whether a woman was listed as one of the first five coauthors; and year of first publication were retrieved from Scopus. Publication metrics were compared between genders using the Wilcoxon signed-rank and χ² tests. Results A total of 711 faculty members (519 male, 192 [27%] female members) were identified. Male faculty had a significantly higher number of total publications (median 54 versus 24, P <.0001), publications per year (median 2.9 versus 1.6, P <.0001), and h- (median 17 versus 10, P <.0001) and m-indices (median 0.83 versus 0.60, P <.0001) than female faculty. Male faculty had a significantly higher percentage of single author (median 1% versus 0%, P =.0014) and last author (median 16% versus 11%, P <.0001) publications than female faculty. Female faculty had a significantly higher percentage of first author publications (21% versus 17%, P =.0025) and were significantly more likely to have another woman in their first five coauthor list (70% versus 45%, P <.0001) than male faculty. Conclusions Large differences exist between female and male faculty in total publications; h- and m-indices; publications per year; number of first, single, last author papers; and percentage of faculty that have a female coauthor in their top five coauthor lists.