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 14:17
Excluding: This Week in The Journal, Editorial, Correction
First author gender ratio: 29 women : 30 men (49%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 20 women : 40 men (33%)
Middle author gender ratio: 95 women : 176 men (35%)
All author gender ratio: 144 women : 246 men (37%)

Excluded: 0 last author, 1 first author, and 5 middle authors. 6 in total.

Neuron
Volume 102, Issue 1 and Issue 2
Excluding: Corrections
First author gender ratio: 19 women : 22 men (46%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 18 women : 27 men (40%)
Middle author gender ratio: 80 women : 114 men (41%)
All author gender ratio: 117 women : 163 men (42%)

Excluded: 0 last authors, 2 first author, and 9 middle author. 11 in total.

Nature Neuroscience
Volume 22, Issue 4
Excluding: Amendments and Corrections, Author/Publisher correction
First author gender ratio: 7 women : 12 men (37%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 7 women : 14 men (33%)
Middle author gender ratio: 45 women : 76 men (34%)
All author gender ratio: 59 women : 102 men (37%)

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