Gender analysis of papers published in ACTAS ESPANOLAS DE PSIQUIATRIA (1999-2006).

INTRODUCTION: The governments and organizations responsible for scientific policies try to encourage equality of gender, among their priorities that of obtaining equal participation and full integration of women in all aspects of the scientific profession. The study analyzes the scientific production of women in the areas of Psychiatry by means of the bibliometric study of the papers published in ACTAS ESPANOLAS DE PSIQUIATRIA.

METHOD: A total of 458 papers published from 1999- 2006 period were downloaded from the Science Citation Index-Expanded database, these including original research papers, review articles and clinical cases. A bibliometric study broken down by gender was carried out to determine the existence or inequalities between men and women regarding scientific productivity, type of document, order of author signatures, on the institutional and geographical level.

RESULTS: The papers were published by 1,194 different authors. The gender of 977 authors was identified, 587 (60.08%) men and 390 (39.92%) women. The percentage of women authorship has risen from 29.92% in 1999 to 38.86% in 2006. A total of 42.92% of authors having one published article were women, while (those with more than nine articles) only accounted for 33%.

CONCLUSION: Bibliometric studies on scientific activity provide essential information to promote gender equality. An annual increase over 1% in the number of female authors in the journal has been observed, which if it continues will lead to a parity in coming years.