Scientific women: Characteristics and factors associated with being first author and author for correspondence in Peruvian journals indexed to SciELO, 2010-2015

Objective: To characterise and determine factors associated with the first authorship and author for correspondence of women who published in Peruvian journals indexed in SciELO between 2010 and 2015. Methodology: Cross-sectional bibliometric analysis of secondary data. All the scientific publications had at least one female author, were evaluated in the 9 Peruvian journals indexed to the SciELO database between 2010 and 2015. The characteristics of the article, authorship and filiation were evaluated. Descriptive and analytical statistics were obtained. Results: Of the 795 scientific publications that had at least one female author, 41% (324) and 35% (253) had a woman as the first author or corresponding author, respectively. The journal that had publications with the largest female participation was the National Institute of Health (153). As regards the year of publication, the percentages of women as the first (R2 = 0) or corresponding author (R2 < .01) did not vary. When performing the bivariate analysis, there was a lower frequency of first authors reporting cases (PR: 0.46, 95% CI: 0.27-0.78), and short originals (PR: 0.46, 95% CI: 0.24-0.90). First authors were more frequent (RP: 1.60, 95% CI: 1.11-2.30) in the hereditary medical journal, and the stomatology journal had a higher frequency of female first authors (RP: 2.09; 95% CI: 1.31-3.35) and corresponding authors (RP: 2.15; 95% CI: 1.30-3.56). Conclusion: The data and leadership of women in Peruvian scientific publications is still a minority and is stagnant in time. For this reason, collaboration and training networks must be created that are more inclusive with women, in order to support and help sustain its growth.