Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Patterns Of Authorship In Ecology And Evolution: First, Last, And Corresponding Authorship Vary With Gender And Geography, Charles W. Fox, Josiah P. Ritchey, C. E. Timothy Paine

Entomology Faculty Publications

The position of an author on the byline of a paper affects the inferences readers make about their contributions to the research. We examine gender differences in authorship in the ecology literature using two datasets: submissions to six journals between 2010 and 2015 (regardless of whether they were accepted), and manuscripts published by 151 journals between 2009 and 2015. Women were less likely to be last (i.e., “senior”) authors (averaging ~23% across journals, years, and datasets) and sole authors (~24%), but more likely to be first author (~38%), relative to their overall frequency of authorship (~31%). However, the proportion of …