To assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on authorship gender in articles submitted to The Journal of Pediatrics.
Using gender-labeling algorithms and human inspection, we inferred the gender of corresponding authors of original articles submitted in January-February and April-May of 2019 and 2020 noting those articles related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We used Pearson chi-square tests to determine differences in gender proportions during the selected periods in the United States and internationally.
We analyzed 1,521 original articles. Submissions increased 10.9% from Jan-Feb 2019 to Jan-Feb 2020 and 61.6% from Apr-May 2019 to Apr-May 2020. Women accounted for 56.0% of original articles in Apr-May 2019, but only 49.8% of original articles in Apr-May 2020. Original articles focused on COVID-19 represented a small percentage of additional articles submitted in Jan-Feb 2020 (1/33 or 3.0%) and (53/199 or 26.6%) in Apr-May 2020 compared with the number of submissions in the same months in 2019. International male CAs submitted a significantly larger proportion of original articles compared with international female CAs in Apr-May 2020 compared to Apr-May 2019 (p=0.043). There was no difference in CA gender proportion in the United States (US in Apr-May of 2020 versus Apr-May of 2019 (p=0.95). There was no significant difference in final dispositions based on CA gender for original articles from 2019 and 2020 (P = .17).
Original article submissions to The Journal increased in Apr-May 2020, with the greatest increase by international male CAs. The majority of the submission growth was not related to COVID-19.

Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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