Forging ahead towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals: A visual analysis of publications on gender equality in biomedicine
This poster was presenting at the Medical Library Association / Special Library Association '23 conference
Objectives: The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are part of a global effort to, “improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth,” through 17 focus areas. Our aim is to demonstrate the value of Open Access (OA) and how it can help achieve the UN’s goals, with a focus on SDG 5 Gender Equality in the field of Biomedical and Clinical Science. We will evaluate publications classified under SDG 5 and analyze their OA status and Altmetric data; we will report on the top institutions and researchers contributing to this goal and their respective openness.
Methods: Using Dimensions and Altmetric Explorer as data sources, publications were limited to years 2016-2023, and by institutions in the United States and Canada. Publications were filtered under SDG 5 Gender Equality, and Fields of Research classification was used to limit publications to the field of “Biomedical and Clinical Science.” A bespoke dataset containing Dimensions and Altmetric data was created in Google BigQuery and results were analyzed in Google Data Studio and Tableau through interactive dashboards. Descriptive statistics were explored by mean and standard deviation comparisons. Visualizations, such as choropleth maps, radar charts, and bar and line graphs, will be highlighted on the poster, along with the relevant datasets.
Results: The institutions producing the highest volume of publications (Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and UCSF) were not necessarily the institutions with the most open publications (UCSD, Columbia, UCSF). The most prolific individuals were from UCSD, University of Michigan, and Vancouver General Hospital. Broadly, these publications were popular with the masses—75% of publications received online attention tracked by Altmetric. While a slim majority (56%) of the publications were OA, 44% of publications were closed access, revealing that much of the research is not accessible to many. Altmetric data reveal that OA publications received much more attention than their closed access counterparts.
Conclusions: Gender equality in healthcare is a widespread issue, with publication topics ranging from domestic violence to a lack of representation in medical education. These publications are popular with the public, and receive widespread news, policy, and social media attention tracked by Altmetric, with OA publications receiving more attention overall. However, a large percentage (44%) of publications are closed access. The aim of SDGs is to improve health and reduce inequality, and the closed nature of many of these publications is in opposition of that goal. This, along with the more prolific dissemination and online attention of OA research, can serve as another call to action to push towards open access.
