The Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Author Gender and Manuscript Acceptance Rates Among Pulmonary and Critical Care Journals

Abstract

Rationale: The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly disrupted academic endeavors worldwide, disproportionately influencing female physicians and scientists, and potentially negatively impacting the quantity and quality of research unrelated to COVID-19. We sought to evaluate whether the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a) changes in manuscript submission and acceptance rates among pulmonary/critical care medicine journals, and b) gender-based disparities in these rates. Methods: We used a validated database of author gender to analyze first, senior, and corresponding authorship of all manuscripts submitted to four pulmonary/critical care journals based in the United States (US) between January 1, 2018 and December 31, 2020. We constructed interrupted time series regression models to evaluate whether the proportion of female first and senior authors of non-COVID-19 original research manuscripts changed coincident with the COVID- 19 pandemic. Next, we performed multivariable logistic regressions to evaluate the association of author gender with acceptance of original research manuscript after adjusting for subject category, author world region, and journal. We then conducted sensitivity analyses including all non-original research manuscripts. Results: Among 8,332 original research submissions, women comprised 39.9% and 28.3% of first and senior authors, respectively. We found no change in the proportion of female first or senior authors of non-COVID-19 or COVID-19 submitted research manuscripts during the COVID-19 era. Although female first authorship was not associated with manuscript acceptance, female senior authorship was associated with decreased acceptance of non-COVID research manuscripts (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0.84, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.71-0.99). Non-COVID-19 manuscripts submitted during the COVID-19 era had reduced odds of acceptance, regardless of author gender (first author analysis: aOR 0.46 [95% CI 0.36-0.59];senior author analysis: aOR 0.46 [95% CI 0.37-0.57]). Conclusions: Women comprise a minority of first and senior authors among research manuscripts submitted to US-based pulmonary and critical care journals, but this was not influenced by the pandemic. Female senior authorship of non-COVID-19 research manuscripts was associated with reduced odds of acceptance. However, non-COVID manuscripts were nearly 50% less likely to be accepted during the COVID-19 era, independent of author gender. These results provide important insights into the influence of the pandemic on gender disparities in academic medicine and on the publication of high-quality research focused on topics unrelated to COVID-19.