Further Insights into HERstory* in the HIStory of the Journal of Applied Physiology

We previously audited the Journal of Applied Physiology over its entire history to assess the involvement of female individuals as research participants and manuscript authors. Here we assess potential factors influencing the inclusion of female individuals as authors and research participants. We previously found that, over the 28,000+ Journal of Applied Physiology papers published from 1948 to 2023, 20% of authors were female individuals. In the present analysis, we found that this percentage was very similar for human research (20%), animal model (20%), and non-experimental papers (17%). Over this history, papers with three or more male authors accounted for the majority of papers with at least one male author, whereas the majority of papers with at least one female author had a single female author. As a baseline, when a manuscript has all male authors, female individuals represent 21% of research participants. However, with at least one female author on a manuscript 42% of research participants were female individuals. There is also a dose-response relationship - with one female author on a paper female individuals account for 39% of the participants, with it increasing to 43% with two female authors, and to 46% with three or more female authors. In manuscripts with male first/last authors, female individuals represent 31% of research participants whereas with a female first/last author 44% of research participants were female individuals. Furthermore, when there were only male research participants in a study, only 16% of the authors were female individuals, whereas when only female research participants were included in a study the percentage of female authors was over twice as high at 35%. Thus, herein some factors are identified, mostly the number of female authors on a manuscript, that have a substantial effect on the inclusion of female research participants in applied physiology research publications.