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%.

Plots:

Data:

Journal of Neuroscience
Volume 38, 49 and 50
Excluding: This Week in The Journal, Editorial, Correction
First author gender ratio: 14 women : 15 men (48%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 9 women : 21 men (30%)
Middle author gender ratio: 53 women : 84 men (39%)
All author gender ratio: 76 women : 120 men (39%)

Excluded: 1 first author, 0 last authors, and 3 middle authors. 3 in total.

Neuron
Volume 100, Issue 5 and Issue 6
Excluding: Corrections
First author gender ratio: 15 women : 33 men (31%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 13 women : 36 men (27%)
Middle author gender ratio: 89 women : 143 men (38%)
All author gender ratio: 117 women : 212 men (36%)

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

Nature Neuroscience
Volume 21, Issue 12
Excluding: Amendments and Corrections, Author/Publisher correction
First author gender ratio: 3 women : 12 men (20%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 2 women : 14 men (13%)
Middle author gender ratio: 118 women : 169 men (41%)
All author gender ratio: 123 women : 195 men (39%)

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