Purpose

The presence of women in urology has gradually increased in the last 35 years with an accelerated rate in the last decade. We evaluated manuscript authorship trends by gender. Manuscript authorship is a metric that has been used as a marker of academic productivity. We hypothesized that the number of first and last author publications by women has increased proportionately to the number of women in the field during the last 35 years.

Materials and methods

We performed a bibliometric study to examine authorship gender in The Journal of Urology® and Urology®. We reviewed all original articles published from American institutions in 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009.

Results

Of the 8,313 articles reviewed 5,461 were from American institutions, including 97.5% for which we determined author gender. There were 767 articles with female authors, including 440 first and 327 last authors. First and last female authorship increased from 2.7% of all authors in 1979 to 26.5% in 2009 (test for trend p <0.001). This authorship rate surpasses the rate of growth of women in urology, which increased from 0.24% in 1975 to 6.2% in 2008.

Conclusions

Based on authorship gender analysis women urologists produce manuscripts at a rate that exceeds their number in the field. Findings show that women in urology are productive, active members of the academic community.

Urinary stone disease is the third most common condition affecting the urinary tract. It contributes to a great deal of morbidity for both men and women, and cost the United States (US) over 5.3 billion dollars in 2000 alone. Moreover, it is associated with systemic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and other components of the metabolic syndrome. Reciprocally, these systemic diseases may be contributing to the rising incidence in urinary stone disease. Previously described mechanisms of stone formation attribute stone development and growth to the urinary milieu. While this may partly influence the process, it cannot account for the associations between systemic diseases and stones observed in large community-based studies. Here we present a review of the evidence demonstrating a link between urinary stone disease and components of the metabolic syndrome. We believe a vascular etiology for the initiation of urinary stones may tie these processes together.