Abstract 4136398: Gender Disparities Absent in Citation Metrics and Online Attention Across Thoracic Surgery Publications

Introduction: A recent study by Women As One highlighted the prevalence of “MANuscripts” (publications authored solely by men) and their potential impact on equity in academic promotions within cardiology. The study revealed notable differences in citation rates and online attention between publications in cardiology journals led by male and female authors. To further explore these disparities, we examined publications in prominent thoracic surgery journals. Hypothesis: Thoracic surgery publications where women hold key authorship roles (primary and senior) receive lower citations and online attention compared to those with men as leading authors. Methods: We analyzed data from peer-reviewed publications in 2019 from two high-impact thoracic surgery journals: The Annals of Thoracic Surgery and The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Citation metrics and Altmetric Attention Scores (AAS) were sourced from Google Scholar paired with the Altmetric Google Chrome extension. Citation rates, AAS, and names of primary and senior authors were manually collected between September 22, 2023 and December 21, 2023. The genders of key authors were determined using Genderize, a gender-determination software, supplemented by manual searches for authors not detected by the software. A minimal number of publications were excluded if either their AAS or citation metrics were unavailable. Significant differences in the data were analyzed using one-sided Mann-Whitney U-tests. Results: Of the 1,482 authors included in the analysis, 18.4% were females in primary or senior roles. Our analysis found no significant differences in citation rates or AAS between male and female primary authors (p=0.09 and p=0.31, respectively), or between male and female senior authors (p=0.48 and p=0.38, respectively). Furthermore, after combining the data of male primary and senior authors and comparing it to the combined data of female primary and senior authors, no significant discrepancies were found for both citations (p=0.13) and AAS (p=0.28). Conclusion: Contrary to analyses of cardiology journals, our data from thoracic surgery articles does not indicate a gender disparity between male and female authors in terms of citations and online attention. While this does not definitively rule out the presence of inequity in thoracic surgery research, it suggests that male-authored manuscripts may not be a primary source of gender disparity in this field.