Gender parity in scientific authorship in a National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre : a bibliometric analysis

Objective: Scientific authorship is a vital marker of achievement in academic careers and gender equity is a key performance metric in research. However, there is little understanding of gender equity in publications in biomedical research centres funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). This study assesses the gender parity in scientific authorship of biomedical research. Design: Descriptive, cross-sectional, retrospective bibliometric study. Setting: NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). Data: Data comprised 2409 publications that were either accepted or published between April 2012 and March 2017. The publications were classified as basic science studies, clinical studies (both trial and non-trial studies) and other studies (comments, editorials, systematic reviews, reviews, opinions, book chapters, meeting reports, guidelines and protocols). Main outcome measures: Gender of authors, defined as a binary variable comprising either male or female categories, in six authorship categories: first author, joint first authors, first corresponding author, joint corresponding authors, last author and joint last authors. Results: Publications comprised 39% clinical research (n=939), 27% basic research (n=643) and 34% other types of research (n=827). The proportion of female authors as first author (41%), first corresponding authors (34%) and last author (23%) was statistically significantly lower than male authors in these authorship categories (p<0.001). Of total joint first authors (n=458), joint corresponding authors (n=169) and joint last authors (n=229), female only authors comprised statistically significant (p<0.001) smaller proportions, that is, 15% (n=69), 29% (n=49) and 10% (n=23) respectively, compared with male only authors in these joint authorship categories. There was a statistically significant association between gender of the last author with gender of the first author (p<0.001), first corresponding author (p<0.001) and joint last author (p<0.001). The mean journal impact factor (JIF) was statistically significantly higher when the first corresponding author was male compared with female (Mean JIF: 10.00 vs 8.77, p=0.020); however, the JIF was not statistically different when there were male and female authors as first authors and last authors. Conclusions: Although the proportion of female authors is significantly lower than the proportion of male authors in all six categories of authorship analysed, the proportions of male and female last authors are comparable to their respective proportions as principal investigators in the BRC. These findings suggest positive trends and the NIHR Oxford BRC doing very well in gender parity in the senior (last) authorship category. Male corresponding authors are more likely to publish articles in prestigious journals with high impact factor while both male and female authors at first and last authorship positions publish articles in equally prestigious journals

Exploring uncertainties in the relationship between temperature, ice volume, and sea level over the past 50 million years

and sea level for the past 50 Ma have increased. In parallel, efforts to model ice sheet changes during this period have been ongoing. We review published paleodata and modeling work to provide insights into how sea level responds to changing temperature through changes in ice volume and thermal expansion. To date, the temperature to sea level relationship has been explored for the transition from glacial to interglacial states. Attempts to synthesize the temperature to sea level relationship in deeper time, when temperatures were significantly warmer than present, have been tentative. We first review the existing temperature and sea level data and model simulations, with a discussion of uncertainty in each of these approaches. We then synthesize the sea level and temperature data and modeling results we have reviewed to test plausible forms for the sea level versus temperature relationship. On this very long timescale there are no globally representative temperature proxies, and so we investigate this relationship using deep-sea temperature records and surface temperature records from high and low latitudes. It is difficult to distinguish between the different plausible forms of the temperature to sea level relationship given the wide errors associated with the proxy estimates. We argue that for surface high-latitude Southern Hemisphere temperature and deep-sea temperature, the rate of change of sea level to temperature has not remained constant, i.e., linear, over the past 50 Ma, although the relationship remains ambiguous for the available low-latitude surface temperature data. A nonlinear form between temperature and sea level is consistent with ice sheet modeling studies. This relationship can be attributed to (1) the different glacial thresholds for Southern Hemisphere glaciation compared to Northern Hemisphere glaciation and (2) the ice sheet carrying capacity of the Antarctic continent