Abstract
Purpose :
Uveitis specialists represent a small group of subspecialists among academic ophthalmologists. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate sex differences in scholarly productivity, academic rank, and NIH funding among uveitis specialists.
Methods :
This study was a cross-sectional study of academic uveitis specialists of 113 US ophthalmology programs. Using institutional websites, data on sex, residency graduation year, and academic rank were collected. The Scopus database was used to obtain each faculty’s h-index, which is a measurement of publication productivity and citation impact, and m-quotient, which adjusts for a faculty’s career duration. The NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool database was queried for data on NIH funding. Chi-square testing was used to analyze categorical values and Wilcoxon Rank Sum testing was used for continuous variables.
Results :
A total of 106 academic uveitis specialists were identified, of whom 44 (41.5%) were female and 62 (58.5%) were male. A greater proportion of females vs. males were assistant professors [30 (68.2%) vs. 22 (35.5%); p=0.011] and a smaller proportion of females were full professors [4 (9.1%) vs. 24 (38.7%); p=0.008]. No significance difference was found among associate professors [female: 10 (22.7%) vs. male: 16 (25.8%); p=1.000]. Females had significantly lower median h-indices compared to their male counterparts (5.5 vs. 14.0; p=0.036), but similar median m-quotients (0.5 vs 0.5; p=1.000). Females had a shorter median career duration based on their residency graduation year compared to males (8.0 vs 19.0 years; p <0.001). Among the 22 uveitis specialists who received NIH funding for research, of whom 7 (41.5%) were female and 15 (58.5%) were male, females had a median grant funding of $1.2M compared to $2.5M for males (p=1.000).
Conclusions :
Female academic uveitis specialists are overrepresented among assistant professors and underrepresented among full professors. Although females had lower h-indices than male, there was no difference in m-quotients between sexes, which controlled for the specialists’ career durations. These differences in scholarly productivity are therefore due to the difference in career duration between female and male specialists and indicates that women are equally as academically productive as their male counterparts.
This abstract was presented at the 2022 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CO, May 1-4, 2022, and virtually.