According to a recent study published in JCO Oncology Practice, there is a significant gender gap in oncology research, with women-authored scholarship receiving significantly less attention and less citations than research authored by men.
For their study, the authors examined the altmetric attention scores (AAS) – a measure of the quantity of attention received by a scholarly work – for over 652,000 oncology articles published between January 2009 and January 2024. According to their findings, research with women in the first author position had a 15.2 percent lower AAS score than research with male first authors. Women in the last author position had a 8.3 percent lower AAS score than their male counterparts.
The authors also analyzed citation rates of women-authored oncology research compared to male-authored research. They found that articles with women listed as both the first and last author were cited 7.7 percent below the mean citation rate. In contrast, articles with both male first and last authors were cited 16.2 percent above the mean citation rate. Even in fields with an overrepresentation of women scholars, such as gynecologic oncology, male authored papers were cited more often.
“Our findings highlight a systemic issue where women-authored research is undercited and receives less attention compared with works authored by men, potentially affecting career advancement, funding opportunities, and academic recognition,” the authors write. “As we advance, it will be essential to continue monitoring these metrics and implementing robust policies that not only recognize but also combat the biases that perpetuate gender disparities in academic research.”
The study was led by scientists at Cleveland Clinic with co-authors from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia; the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center; the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Australia; the University of Washington; the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center; and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.