Authorship trends in the Campbell-Walsh-Wein Urology textbook: A sign of the times.

Abstract

Introduction: We aimed to examine temporal trends in author demographics of the Campbell-Walsh-Wein Urology textbook.

Methods: Name, institution, specialty, and faculty rank were extracted for all authors (9^th-12^th editions). A survey was emailed to determine gender. When self-reported data were unavailable, demographics and urologic subspecialty were determined based on name and online biographies. Demographics of academic and practicing urologists were taken from the American Urological Association Census. Chi-squared tests were used for statistical analyses.

Results: Across the 9^th-12^th editions, there were 1119 total authors; 597/627 (95.2%) unique authors were emailed (18 deceased; 12 missing emails) and 161 (27.0%) responded. The final cohort included 536 unique contributors after excluding authors who were not attending urologists. The percentage of women authors increased over time, from 3.4% in the 9^th edition to 12.6% in the 12^th edition. The gender distribution of authors in the 11^th and 12^th editions was comparable to the gender distribution of both academic and practicing urologists for the respective years (p>0.05). A greater proportion of men had attained the rank of professor at the time of authorship (50.2% of men vs. 13.5% of women), and female gender was significantly associated with lower academic rank (p<0.001).

Conclusions: Women urologists represent a smaller but increasing presence as authors of Campbell-Walsh-Wein Urology, mirroring the demographics of academic and practicing urologists. Women authors tended to hold lower academic ranks than their male counterparts. These findings suggest that efforts to promote diversity in authorship have been successful, but there is still room for growth in academic advancement.