Publications

Autism affects approximately 0.79% of the global population—about 65 million people today—according to the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 Autism Spectrum Collaborators. However, evidence indicates persistent underdiagnosis among girls and women. This study examines the evolving landscape of autism research using PubMed data from 2015 to 2024, focusing on sex representation in research projects populations and authorship patterns. We observe an increase in female-focused publications in recent years. Although this trend may suggest a narrowing research gap, it should be interpreted with caution, as manual validation reveals a high indexing error rate. Accordingly, our findings do not provide clear evidence of a real increase in scientific attention to autism in females. Also, women accounted for the majority of first authorships in autism research during the study period.

Moisan, J. M., Kozlowski, D., Richer, F. et Larivière, V. (2026). Gender parity in autism research: A bibliometric review. Dans Conference Proceedings of the 30th Annual International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators (p. 847-855). Antwerp: ECOOM.