Nature has released new data regarding trends in the gender representation across first and last authors published in top STEM journals. Despite gains in overall STEM representation, women have made little progress in senior authorship over the past decade.
Among the top 10 journals by total first authorships, only two increased their representation of female first authors by more than four percentage points over the past decade and only four had women make up at least one-third of first authors in 2025. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences had the greatest representation of women in the first author slot, with 37 percent of its publications listing a female first author. Inorganic Chemistry had the next highest representation of female first authors (35 percent) in 2025.
Female first author representation in Nature Communications, which had the most overall publications in 2025, increased from 27 percent in 2015 to 34 percent in 2025 — tied for the largest percentage point increase among the top 10 journals. Science Advances also had a seven percentage point increase in female first authorship over the past decade, rising from 26 percent to 33 percent.
In contrast, women’s representation among first authors was particularly low in the Journal of High Energy Physics (11 percent, up 1 percent from 2015) and Physical Review Letters (13 percent, up 2 percent in 2025). In Advanced Functional Materials, female first author representation was stagnant at 25 percent from 2015 to 2025.
Among last authors in the top 10 journals, women’s representation was highest in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (22 percent), Nature Communications (20 percent), and Science Advances (20 percent). The journals with the most improvement in female first authorships over the past decade were Science Advances and the Journal of High Energy Physics, that both saw an increase of 4 percentage points. One journal, Advanced Functional Materials, had a one-percentage-point decrease in female last authorship, dropping from 13 percent in 2015 to 12 percent in 2025.