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 23:26
Excluding: This Week in The Journal, Editorial, Correction
First author gender ratio: 21 women : 37 men (36%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 14 women : 46 men (23%)
Middle author gender ratio: 112 women : 155 men (42%)
All author gender ratio: 147 women : 238 men (38%)

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

Neuron
Volume 102, Issue 5 and Issue 6
Excluding: Corrections
First author gender ratio: 13 women : 20 men (39%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 6 women : 28 men (18%)
Middle author gender ratio: 90 women : 110 men (45%)
All author gender ratio: 109 women : 158 men (41%)

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

Nature Neuroscience
Volume 22, Issue 6
Excluding: Amendments and Corrections, Author/Publisher correction
First author gender ratio: 9 women : 10 men (47%)
Last/sole author gender ratio: 4 women : 16 men (20%)
Middle author gender ratio: 50 women : 79 men (36%)
All author gender ratio: 63 women : 105 men (34%)

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