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 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, 50% of graduate students and postdocs in neuroscience are women.

For last or sole authors we take the base rate to be 31%,  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 39, Issues 6:9
Excluding: This Week in The Journal, Editorial, Correction
First author gender ratio: 26 women : 32 men (45%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 16 women : 44 men (27%)
Middle author gender ratio: 97 women : 138 men (41%)
All author gender ratio: 139 women : 214 men (39%)

Excluded: 0 last author, 2 first author, and 4 middle authors. 6 in total.

Neuron
Volume 101, Issue 3 and Issue 4
Excluding: Corrections
First author gender ratio: 22 women : 21 men (51%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 8 women : 35 men (19%)
Middle author gender ratio: 115 women : 191 men (38%)
All author gender ratio: 145 women : 247 men (37%)

Excluded: 0 last authors, 1 first author, and 1 middle author. 2 in total.

Nature Neuroscience
Volume 22, Issue 1
Excluding: Amendments and Corrections, Author/Publisher correction
First author gender ratio: 5 women : 10 men (33%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 4 women : 11 men (27%)
Middle author gender ratio: 65 women : 69 men (49%)
All author gender ratio: 74 women : 90 men (45%)

Excluded: 0 last authors, 0 first authors, 2 middle authors. 2 in total.
NOTE: We included all people listed under consortia (Consortia) in “A Neuroethics Framework for the Australian Brain Initiative” as authors