UC Irvine

Background

While female head and neck surgeons have made significant contributions to the field, women's achievements in scientific communication have traditionally been underreported.

Methods

A search of high-impact journals in the field of head and neck surgery was performed in the Elsevier's Scopus database to identify the top 100 most-cited articles.

Results

The top 100 most-cited articles (during the span of 1953 and 2016) had the highest total number of citations between 2005 and 2009. Women accounted for 36% of first authors and 25% of corresponding authors. Change in the relative number of first female authors in these top 100 articles did not increase significantly between 1950 and 2019.

Conclusion

The proportion of female first authors in head and neck surgery has not significantly increased over the past several decades, despite greater numbers of female trainees. Our findings support the need for additional research on female representation in head and neck surgery.