A new editorial from Nature calls for collective action to address persistent gender disparities in research publishing. The piece responds to recent research by data analysts at Springer Nature—the publishers of Nature—who examined 215,000 submissions to Nature Portfolio journals and found that women made up 16% of corresponding authors for Nature. There were notable variations between journals: women’s authorship rates were higher in psychology (33%) and the life sciences (23%), and lower in physics, chemistry, and computer science (10–13%). Nature reports that targeted outreach has helped boost women’s representation in review articles, but the overall imbalance has not changed since 2018. The editors conclude by calling for a collective response to this systemic problem.
