Orthopedic journals still show mostly light skin in 40,000-image study

Open-access orthopedic journals overwhelmingly publish images of light skin, according to a large-scale analysis of figures published between 2015 and 2024.

Researchers screened 40,674 figures from 14 open-access orthopedic journals and used an artificial intelligence pipeline to classify 2,025 images containing visible skin.

Compared with both a diverse-population reference and United States population estimates, light skin was significantly overrepresented and dark skin significantly underrepresented, with p values below 0.001 for both comparisons.

Both groups still significantly overrepresented light skin and underrepresented medium and dark skin against their respective references.

Subject of Research: Skin color representation in open-access orthopedic journal figures Article Title: Skin color representation in orthopedic literature Article References: Goyal, R. K., Adio, A.