Gender-specific analysis of the authors and the editorial board of Naunyn–Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology from 2000 to 2020

Motivated by the worldwide debate on gender equality, we analyzed the gender structure of the authors and the editorial board of Naunyn–Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology. We wrote an algorithm to assign authors’ first names to a gender to determine the gender distribution of publications. We evaluated publications from German research institutes from 2000 to 2020. This resulted in a data set of 2929 authors. We could assign a first name to almost all authors. The percentage of female authors increased until 2008, but thereafter stagnated at around 30%. The position of senior author is far less often held by women (around 15%). Even though multiple political measures were implemented to increase the female participation, our analysis has shown no increase regardless. We also observed a strong decrease in German authorship (both male and female) since 2000. In the editorial board and for advisory editors, there has been a substantial increase in the proportion of women since 2016 as the result of appointments by the editor-in-chief. We discuss the strengths and limitations of our study in context with the literature and current developments in society and science and methodological pitfalls of studies in this field. More research is required to obtain a full picture of gender structure in science and to be able to properly interpret the data. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00210-021-02166-3.