Introduction: Gender and racial disparities are pervasive in every field of medicine. Although females and blacks are not only underrepresented in the academic and research community; their representation in research grant awards also rests negligible. This study highlights the discrimination in first and senior author publications in gastroenterology randomized control trials.
Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional analysis of the data from the PubMed search engine using the keyword gastroenterology and RCT as the article type from January 1, 2000, to March 31, 2022, was obtained. The PubMed search was performed using the easy-PubMed package in R, version and detail analysis was executed after gender and racial profile sorting.
Results: A total of 16482 randomized clinical trial papers were found in the PubMed search engine, including 30 PubMed index journals. However, after excluding lower index and non-popular research journals, 2435 randomized control trials were included from fifteen journals in this study.
Compared to other races, whites own the majority of first and senior authorship. Additionally, male representation remains in the majority for first and senior authorship in Gastroenterology Randomized Controlled trails. Only 35% female and 28% black authors represented for first and senior authorship from January 1, 2000, to March 31, 2022.
Discussion: Our study highlighted blacks and female were minimally represented for first and senior authorship in gastroenterology randomized controlled trials from Jan 2000 to March 2022, as compared to Whites and males. Moreover, females and black authors were under-represented in nearly all academic journals publications.
Considering gender, the data showed an increase in the number of females from 2000 to 2022 for total number of research publications. However, as compared to males, there remains a gap in the female authorship in major journal publications positions (2000: 22% vs. 35%; 2022).
Institutional culture plays a crucial role in promoting women in science and medicine. Several publications have documented a persistent and damaging culture of behavior that limits the participation of women in academics.Some studies also support the basis that diverse institutions train physicians who more effectively serve minority communities Further research is needed to explore policies for recruitment and grant award distribution that may be contributing to racial and gender disparity in research publications and the ways to rectify the gaps.
