Women authors underrepresented among retracted medical papers

(Press-News.org) Women are underrepresented among authors of retracted publications, particularly in cases involving multiple retractions, according to a new study published November 19, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Paul Sebo of the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Gender disparities in scientific authorship are well documented, yet little is known about gender representation among authors of retracted publications. However, understanding the demographics of authors of retracted publications could shed light on the social and professional dynamics that lead to retractions.

In the new study, Sebo analyzed 878 retracted publications from 131 high-impact medical journals across nine clinical disciplines (anesthesiology, dermatology, general internal medicine, gynecology/obstetrics, neurology, oncology, pediatrics, psychiatry, and radiology). Among authors of these publications, gender was inferred using an AI-powered tool; authors were included in the analysis where gender could be assigned with at least 60% confidence.

Among these 3,743 authors, the analysis suggested that only 23.1% were women. Women accounted for just 16.5% of first authors and 12.7% of last authors—substantially below the 41.3–45.4% and 26.1–33.4% benchmarks for female first and last authors of biomedical publications between 2008 and 2017. The gender gap was even more pronounced in misconduct-related retractions, where women first authors accounted for only 11.5% of all cases. Women were also significantly less likely to have multiple retractions.

Females were also underrepresented among retracted authors in most individual disciplines, with exceptions only in dermatology and radiology (where women were overrepresented as first authors) and pediatrics (where women where overrepresented as last authors), though these were based on small numbers.

The study was limited by the algorithmic inference of gender, and the focus on only high-impact journals, which may not reflect gender disparities in lower-impact or non-English-language journals. However, Sebo concludes that women are consistently underrepresented among authors of retracted publications in high-impact medical journals, particularly in misconduct-related cases and in key authorship positions.

Sebo adds: “Our study shows that women are substantially underrepresented among authors of retracted medical publications, particularly in misconduct-related cases and in key authorship positions. These findings suggest that gender disparities in scientific publishing persist not only in authorship and visibility, but also in how retractions affect researchers’ careers.”

 

 

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/3XiJGx

Citation: Sebo P (2025) Gender disparities among authors of retracted publications in medical journals: A cross-sectional study. PLoS One 20(11): e0335059. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0335059

Author countries: Switzerland

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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