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Women’s health in The BMJ: a data science history

OBJECTIVE: To determine how the representation of women’s health has changed in clinical studies over the course of 70 years. DESIGN: Observational study of 71 866 research articles published between 1948 and 2018 in The BMJ. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The incidence of women-specific health topics over...

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Autores principales: Hamulyák, Eva N, Brockmeier, Austin J, Killas, Johanna D, Ananiadou, Sophia, Middeldorp, Saskia, Leroi, Armand M
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7580070/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33087376
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039759
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author Hamulyák, Eva N
Brockmeier, Austin J
Killas, Johanna D
Ananiadou, Sophia
Middeldorp, Saskia
Leroi, Armand M
author_facet Hamulyák, Eva N
Brockmeier, Austin J
Killas, Johanna D
Ananiadou, Sophia
Middeldorp, Saskia
Leroi, Armand M
author_sort Hamulyák, Eva N
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: To determine how the representation of women’s health has changed in clinical studies over the course of 70 years. DESIGN: Observational study of 71 866 research articles published between 1948 and 2018 in The BMJ. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The incidence of women-specific health topics over time. General linear, additive and segmented regression models were used to estimate trends. RESULTS: Over 70 years, the overall odds that a word in a BMJ research article was ‘woman’ or ‘women’ increased by an annual factor of 1.023, but this rate of increase varied by clinical specialty with some showing little or no change. The odds that an article was about some aspect of women-specific health increased much more slowly, by an annual factor of 1.004. The incidence of articles about particular areas of women-specific medicine such as pregnancy did not show a general increase, but rather fluctuated over time. The incidence of articles making any mention of women, gender or sex declined between 1948 and 2005, after which it rose steeply so that by 2018 few papers made no mention of them at all. CONCLUSIONS: Over time women have become ever more prominent in BMJ research articles. However, the importance of women-specific health topics has waxed and waned as researchers responded ephemerally to medical advances, public health programmes, and sociolegal changes. The appointment of a woman editor-inchief in 2005 may have had a dramatic effect on whether women were mentioned in research articles.
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spelling pubmed-75800702020-10-27 Women’s health in The BMJ: a data science history Hamulyák, Eva N Brockmeier, Austin J Killas, Johanna D Ananiadou, Sophia Middeldorp, Saskia Leroi, Armand M BMJ Open Medical Publishing and Peer Review OBJECTIVE: To determine how the representation of women’s health has changed in clinical studies over the course of 70 years. DESIGN: Observational study of 71 866 research articles published between 1948 and 2018 in The BMJ. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The incidence of women-specific health topics over time. General linear, additive and segmented regression models were used to estimate trends. RESULTS: Over 70 years, the overall odds that a word in a BMJ research article was ‘woman’ or ‘women’ increased by an annual factor of 1.023, but this rate of increase varied by clinical specialty with some showing little or no change. The odds that an article was about some aspect of women-specific health increased much more slowly, by an annual factor of 1.004. The incidence of articles about particular areas of women-specific medicine such as pregnancy did not show a general increase, but rather fluctuated over time. The incidence of articles making any mention of women, gender or sex declined between 1948 and 2005, after which it rose steeply so that by 2018 few papers made no mention of them at all. CONCLUSIONS: Over time women have become ever more prominent in BMJ research articles. However, the importance of women-specific health topics has waxed and waned as researchers responded ephemerally to medical advances, public health programmes, and sociolegal changes. The appointment of a woman editor-inchief in 2005 may have had a dramatic effect on whether women were mentioned in research articles. BMJ Publishing Group 2020-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7580070/ /pubmed/33087376 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039759 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Medical Publishing and Peer Review
Hamulyák, Eva N
Brockmeier, Austin J
Killas, Johanna D
Ananiadou, Sophia
Middeldorp, Saskia
Leroi, Armand M
Women’s health in The BMJ: a data science history
title Women’s health in The BMJ: a data science history
title_full Women’s health in The BMJ: a data science history
title_fullStr Women’s health in The BMJ: a data science history
title_full_unstemmed Women’s health in The BMJ: a data science history
title_short Women’s health in The BMJ: a data science history
title_sort women’s health in the bmj: a data science history
topic Medical Publishing and Peer Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7580070/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33087376
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039759
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