Gendered Patterns in Women’s Authorship, Collaboration, and Citation-Based Recognition in Diabetes Health Services Research

Background Women are a substantial part of the health workforce and health systems research community, yet gendered patterns in publication roles, concept profiles, collaboration, and recognition remain under-analyzed. Objective To characterize gendered patterns of visible publication leadership in diabetes health services research (HSR). Methods We conducted a bibliometric and co-authorship network analysis of 2,410 diabetes HSR articles published from 2015 to 2025, enriched with OpenAlex, Crossref, and Semantic Scholar data. Corresponding authorship was the primary proxy for visible publication leadership; first authorship was examined in sensitivity analysis. We analyzed concept profiles, team composition, funding, citations, and network centrality. Results Women held 51.8% of corresponding authorship positions. Female-led papers were associated with distinct concept profiles, with greater representation in patient-centered and implementation-oriented domains, and were associated with more gender-inclusive author teams than male-led papers (median women co-authors: 62.5% vs 33.3%). In co-authorship network analyses, women were represented proportionally in brokerage-oriented positions measured by betweenness centrality. Unadjusted citation differences favored male-led papers, but adjusted citation models did not support a persistent citation disadvantage for female-led papers. Conclusion In this diabetes HSR corpus, female-led papers were associated with distinct concept profiles, more gender-inclusive teams, and proportional representation in brokerage-oriented co-authorship positions. Citation-based recognition should be interpreted cautiously because citation counts are influenced by publication year, concept profile, journal visibility, funding, open access, team size, and citation practices.