(409) Gender Imbalance in Editorial Boards of Critical Care Medicine Journals

Introduction: A gender imbalance on authorship in the medical scientific field has been described in terms of authorship’s roles. Critical Care Medicine (CCM) is not exception to this imbalance. Whether a gender imbalance with under representation of females in the Editorial roles of CCM journals remains to be comprehensively assessed.

Methods: A gender imbalance on authorship in the medical scientific field has been described in terms of authorship’s roles. Critical Care Medicine (CCM) is not exception to this imbalance. Whether a gender imbalance with under representation of females in the Editorial roles of CCM journals remains to be comprehensively assessed.

Results: Among 99 screened CCM journals, 92 journals were included and seven excluded because of missing data. Information on 4002 EB members were collected with 937 women (23.4%). Among 104, 12 (11.5%) Editor in Chief were Females. In other roles, Females has more editorial roles responsibilities (Senior 21.2%, p=0.04; Associate 28.1%, p=0.0002; EB member 22.7%, p=0.0038). When exploring the gender imbalance ratio according to the impact factor, separating the journals ranking in Q1+Q2 (top) vs Q3+Q4 (bottom), there was no difference in gender balance (Figure).

Conclusions: In the present study, Females (23.4%) were underrepresented in the EB of CCM journals especially as Editor in Chief (11.5%), confirming a large gap on gender distribution across EB members roles in CCM journals. The gender was not influenced by the journal ranks.