{"title":"Gender Distribution of Course Material Authors in a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Program.","authors":"John P Bourgeois, KiLee Fortier, Nicholas Frank","doi":"10.3138/jvme-2024-0022","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The gender distribution of authors in the health sciences literature has been well documented. We explored whether this distribution persists among library course reserves for a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program, as course reserves are veterinary faculty members' own teaching materials. Such a bibliometric analysis of course reserves provides a novel method of examining curricular materials. In the Fall of 2022, researchers collected the library's current course reserve metadata, including fields, such as author names and material types. Binary gender was determined based on a variety of sources: traditional naming conventions, gender presentation in photographs, pronouns in signatures, and biographies. Of the 167 exported authors, 162 were included for further analysis in SPSS. Course reserves' authors were analyzed by collaborators and media type. The dichotomous gender distribution of first authors was 76% male/ 24% female. Female first authors were more likely to have collaborators than male first authors (39% vs 26%). When collaborations did occur, first and second authors had the same gender at a significantly higher rate. Exploring author gender across material type, we found that generally, the first author gender ratio remained 3 males to every female. Contextualizing these results in the framework of contemporary health sciences literature, we found that the gender disparities in course reserves to be unsurprising, while still disappointing.</p>","PeriodicalId":17575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of veterinary medical education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of veterinary medical education","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme-2024-0022","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"EDUCATION, SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The gender distribution of authors in the health sciences literature has been well documented. We explored whether this distribution persists among library course reserves for a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program, as course reserves are veterinary faculty members' own teaching materials. Such a bibliometric analysis of course reserves provides a novel method of examining curricular materials. In the Fall of 2022, researchers collected the library's current course reserve metadata, including fields, such as author names and material types. Binary gender was determined based on a variety of sources: traditional naming conventions, gender presentation in photographs, pronouns in signatures, and biographies. Of the 167 exported authors, 162 were included for further analysis in SPSS. Course reserves' authors were analyzed by collaborators and media type. The dichotomous gender distribution of first authors was 76% male/ 24% female. Female first authors were more likely to have collaborators than male first authors (39% vs 26%). When collaborations did occur, first and second authors had the same gender at a significantly higher rate. Exploring author gender across material type, we found that generally, the first author gender ratio remained 3 males to every female. Contextualizing these results in the framework of contemporary health sciences literature, we found that the gender disparities in course reserves to be unsurprising, while still disappointing.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Veterinary Medical Education (JVME) is the peer-reviewed scholarly journal of the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC). As an internationally distributed journal, JVME provides a forum for the exchange of ideas, research, and discoveries about veterinary medical education. This exchange benefits veterinary faculty, students, and the veterinary profession as a whole by preparing veterinarians to better perform their professional activities and to meet the needs of society.
The journal’s areas of focus include best practices and educational methods in veterinary education; recruitment, training, and mentoring of students at all levels of education, including undergraduate, graduate, veterinary technology, and continuing education; clinical instruction and assessment; institutional policy; and other challenges and issues faced by veterinary educators domestically and internationally. Veterinary faculty of all countries are encouraged to participate as contributors, reviewers, and institutional representatives.