Table 1 Algorithm to determine author gender

We used the following methods, in sequential order, to assign a gender to each author’s name.

1. Editorial authors who were known to the investigator(s)

2. Names typically affiliated with a single gender (e.g., Stephanie for a woman, or Stephen for a man)

3. We searched the genderize.io web database (https://genderize.io/ accessed May 14, 2018) for names unknown to investigators and without a strong gender association, using the following steps:

a. We opened a web browser.

b. In the search bar, we entered the following address with the name specified: https://api.genderize.io/?name=name (e.g., https://api.genderize.io/?name=philip).

c. The browser displayed the name, associated gender, the probability of being that gender, and the count upon which it based that probability (e.g., {“name”:“Philip”,“gender”:“male”, “probability”:1, “count”:1097}).

d. We recorded the associated gender if the probability was ≥ 0.90.

4. We used the internet (e.g., using an author’s affiliation from one of their included editorials in our sample) to search for an image or reference to the author’s gender.

5. We assigned a value of “unknown” to the gender of all editorial authors for whom a gender could not be classified via methods 1-4.