key: cord-0298485-3xa4hr8g authors: GONZALEZ-ALVAREZ, J. title: World Science against COVID-19: Gender and Geographical Distribution of Research. date: 2021-09-29 journal: nan DOI: 10.1101/2021.09.29.21264261 sha: 18ca86be3585f4267efd41dcd5671b018f7ebe5f doc_id: 298485 cord_uid: 3xa4hr8g In just a year and a half, an enormous volume of scientific research has been generated throughout the world to study a virus/disease that turned into a pandemic. All the articles on COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 included in the SCI-EXPANDED database (Web of Science), signed by more than a third of a million of authorships, were analyzed. Gender could be identified in 92% of the authorships. Women represent 40% of all authors, a similar proportion as first authors, but just 30% as last/senior authors. The pattern of collaboration shows an interesting finding: when a woman signs as a first or last/senior author, the article byline approximates gender parity. According to the corresponding address, the USA shares 22.8% of all world articles, followed by China (14.4%), Italy (7.8%), the UK (5.8%), India (4.2%), Spain (3.8%), Germany (3.6%), France (2.9%), Turkey (2.5%), and Canada (2.4%). Despite their short lives, the papers received an average of 11 citations. The high impact of papers from China is striking (25.1 citations; the UK, 12.4 citations; the USA, 11.3 citations), presumably because the disease emerged in China, and the first publications (very cited) came from there. In December 2019, the Chinese city of Wuhan became the center of an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown origin. One month later, Chinese scientists isolated a novel coronavirus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2, responsible for this viral pneumonia, which was later designated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by the World Health Organization 1 . Since then, in just a year and a half, an enormous volume of scientific research has been generated throughout the world to study this new virus/disease turned into a pandemic. I analyzed all the articles on COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 included in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) database of Web of Science, signed by more than a third of a million of authorships. The analysis was done from a double perspective as I wanted to determine the gender composition of the authors and discover the participation of women in this gigantic scientific endeavor. Furthermore, I wanted to know the participation of the different regions of the world by analyzing the corresponding addresses. Sample data. All the Articles on COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 (TOPIC) included in the SCI-EXPANDED database (Web of Science, Clarivate Analytics) were selected on [10] [11] [12] [13] May 2021. It is recognized that this database includes the world's leading journals of science and technology after a rigorous selection process Our collection consisted of Gender identification of authors. I examined the authorships to determine their gender. The SCI-EXPANDED database (like most scientific database) does not provide information about the authors' gender. However, in 2008 the Web of Science began to include the authors' full names, although a small proportion of records still display only the authors' initials. All the authors' first names were matched through two gender databases: GenderChecker (acquired from http://genderchecker.com/) and Gender API (acquired from https://genderapi.io/). Procedure. Each variable of interest (author name and surnames, title of article, year of publication, journal, corresponding address, etc.) was extracted using the BibExcel program 2 and merged in a master Excel database to perform the bibliometric analyses. Statistical analyses were carried out with the SPSS v.22 software. Rate of women authors. From the total 340,868 authorships, and after excluding the authorships with only initials, unisex names, or first names that did not match the gender databases, gender could be identified in 314,319 (92.2%). Men were 188,465, and women, 125,854. Therefore, women represent 40% of all the known-gender authorships a . This percentage of female researchers regarding COVID-19 (or SARS-CoV-2) is quite far from the gender parity [X 2 (df = 1) = 6297.99, p< .0001, Cramer's V = 0.10 b ], although a somewhat larger proportion than the overall presence of women in worldwide science, about a third of researchers 3 . González-Alvarez analyzed The Lancet journals during a The percentages of female or male authorships will always refer to the known-gender totals. b Cramer's V determines the effect size. The standard interpretation for one degree of freedom (df) is: 0.10 = small, 0.30 = medium, 0.50 = large effect. . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. Our data show that women are clearly underrepresented as last/senior authors compared to the overall rate: only 30.2% of the last authors of articles on COVID-19, signed by three or more authors, were women (Table 1, Figure 1 ). In biomedical sciences, this position is usually reserved for the senior or leading scientist on a research project and normally corresponds to a scientist with a consolidated and longer career 7 . This relative female underrepresentation as last/senior authors has also been observed in other gender studies on scientific and biomedical publications 3,4,6 , suggesting that, in addition to other variables, age-or more exactly, seniority-might play some role in the . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. and 45.8% men/54.2% women when a woman signed as the last/senior author, which was slightly female-biased). This fact does not necessarily mean that there is a causeand-effect relationship between the presence of women in one of these two key positions and near gender parity in the article byline, but these two facts are correlated. It gives the impression that leading female researchers tend to co-publish with women more than . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. (which was not certified by peer review) preprint The copyright holder for this this version posted September 29, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.29.21264261 doi: medRxiv preprint leading male researchers do; alternatively, they may be working on subtopics that are relatively more appealing to women. On the contrary, when the first author is a man, the gender composition of the byline is more asymmetrical (67.2% men/32.8% women, Figure 2 ), compared to the overall asymmetry (60.0% men/40.0% women), Χ 2 (df=1) = 2576.77, p < .0001, Cramer's V = 0.07. The same pattern appears when a man is the last or senior author (65.5% men/34.5% women, Figure 2 ), Χ 2 (df=1) = 1655.57, p < .0001, Cramer's V = 0.06. in most groups, I considered the corresponding address of each article. Table 2 shows data from the 20 countries with the highest number of articles. In Table S1 After analyzing all the scientific articles on COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 included in the SCI-EXPANDED database, we can draw the following conclusions: c Each gender received more citations than the overall mean because the most cited articles tended to be signed by more authors. d The effect size interpretations for partial eta squared (η 2 p) values are: .01 = small, .06 = medium, and .14 = large. . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. (which was not certified by peer review) preprint The copyright holder for this this version posted September 29, 2021. ; • Women represent 40% of authorships, still far from gender parity. • Compared to the overall rate, women are relatively underrepresented as last or senior authors (30.2%). This fact, also found in other studies, suggests that age, or more specifically, seniority, could play some role in the gender composition of biomedical researchers. • The pattern of collaboration shows an interesting finding, also observed in another study 6 : when a woman signs as the first or last/senior author, the article byline approximates gender parity. This work did not require ethical approval. This work was completed with resources provided by the University Jaume I of Castellon (Spain). . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. (which was not certified by peer review) preprint The copyright holder for this this version posted September 29, 2021. ; Figure 2 . Percentages of Men and Women as authors, depending on which gender occupied the first or last/senior positions in the article byline. Values were calculated for articles with at least three coauthors. . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. (which was not certified by peer review) preprint (*) computed from articles with a least three authors. . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. (which was not certified by peer review) preprint The copyright holder for this this version posted September 29, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.29.21264261 doi: medRxiv preprint Table 3 . The 30 most cited articles on COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 (SCI-EXPANDED, Web of Science). Cao B. Clinical course and risk factors for mortality of adult inpatients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: a retrospective cohort study How to use Bibexcel for various types of bibliometric analysis Celebrating scholarly communication studies: A Festschrift for Olle Persson at his 60th Leuven, Belgium: International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics Bibliometrics: global gender disparities in science Author gender in The Lancet journals Trends and comparison of female first authorship in high impact medical journals: observational study Women in contemporary cancer research 2 Clinical course and risk factors for mortality of adult inpatients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: a retrospective cohort study 2020 LANCET Peoples R China 7396 Pathological findings of COVID-19 associated with acute respiratory distress syndrome 2020 LANCET RESPIRATORY MEDICINE Peoples R China 2731 Presenting Characteristics, Comorbidities, and Outcomes Among 5700 Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 in the Risk Factors Associated with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome and Death in Patients with Coronavirus Disease Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID-19: results of an open-label non-randomized clinical trial 2020 Antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in patients with COVID-19 2020 NATURE MEDICINE Peoples R China 2021 A Trial of Lopinavir-Ritonavir in Adults Hospitalized with Severe Neurologic Manifestations of Hospitalized Patients with Coronavirus Disease The species Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus: classifying 2019-nCoV and naming it SARS-CoV-2 2020 NATURE MICROBIOLOGY Russia 1747 Immediate Psychological Responses and Associated Factors during the Initial Stage of the 2019 Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Epidemic among the General Population in China Correlation of Chest CT and RT-PCR Testing for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China: A Report of 1014 Cases 2020 RADIOLOGY Peoples R China 1555 Baseline Characteristics and Outcomes of 1591 Patients Infected With SARS-CoV-2 Admitted to ICUs of the Lombardy Region Incidence of thrombotic complications in critically ill ICU patients with Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19): The epidemic and the challenges 2020 The Incubation Period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) From Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases: Estimation and Application 2020 ANNALS OF INTERNAL MEDICINE USA 1321 Factors Associated with Mental Health Outcomes Among Health Care Workers Exposed to Coronavirus Disease Clinical characteristics and intrauterine vertical transmission potential of COVID-19 infection in nine pregnant women: a retrospective review of medical records 2020 LANCET Peoples R China 1249 patients with coronavirus disease 2019: retrospective study The authors declare no conflict of interest.