Methods:

See our January 2018 Journal Watch post for details on methods.

Base rates:

First authors are more likely to be graduate students or postdoctoral fellows. Using our calculations based on registration for the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, 49% of graduate students and postdocs in neuroscience are women.

For last or sole authors we take the base rate to be 32%,  the percentage of women faculty at the same meeting. We take the base rate for all authors to be the overall percentage of 43%.

Data:

Journal of Neuroscience
Volume 38, 31 through 35
Excluding: This Week in The Journal, Corrections
First author gender ratio: 21 women : 51 men (29%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 21 women : 54 men (28%)
Middle author gender ratio: 98 women : 153 men (39%)
All author gender ratio: 140 women : 258 men (35%)

Excluded: 1 first author, 0 last authors, and 9 middle authors. 10 in total.

Neuron
Volume 99, Issue 3 and Issue 4
Excluding: Erratum
First author gender ratio: 6 women : 29 men (17%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 9 women : 30 men (23%)
Middle author gender ratio: 53 women : 102 men (28%)
All author gender ratio: 68 women : 161 men (30%)

Excluded: 0 last authors, 1 first authors, and 7 middle authors. 8 in total.

Nature Neuroscience
Volume 21, Issue 6
Excluding: Corrections
First author gender ratio: 6 women : 7 men (46%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 4 women : 12 men (25%)
Middle author gender ratio: 39 women : 64 men (38%)
All author gender ratio: 49 women : 83 men (37%)

Excluded:0 last authors, 0 first authors, 6 middle authors. 6 in total.

Nature Neuroscience
Volume 21, Issue 8
Excluding: Amendments & Corrections
First author gender ratio: 4 women : 7 men (35%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 7 women : 7 men (50%)
Middle author gender ratio: 41 women : 47 men (47%)
All author gender ratio: 52 women : 61 men (46%)

Excluded: 0 last authors, 0 first authors and 0 middle authors. 0 in total.