Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
BMJ Glob Health. 2021 Jan;6(1). doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003758.
Many have called for greater inclusion of researchers from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the conduct of global health research, yet the extent to which this occurs is unclear. Prior studies are journal-, subject-, or region-specific, largely rely on manual review, and yield varying estimates not amenable to broad evaluation of the literature. We conducted a large-scale investigation of the contribution of LMIC-affiliated researchers to published global health research and examined whether this contribution differed over time. We searched titles, abstracts, and keywords for the names of countries ever classified as low-, lower middle-, or upper middle-income by the World Bank, and limited our search to items published from 2000 to 2017 in health science-related journals. Publication metadata were obtained from Elsevier/Scopus and analysed in statistical software. We calculated proportions of publications with any, first, and last authors affiliated with any LMIC as well as the same LMIC(s) identified in the title/abstract/keywords, and stratified analyses by year, country, and countries' most common income status. We analysed 786 779 publications and found that 86.0% included at least one LMIC-affiliated author, while 77.2% and 71.2% had an LMIC-affiliated first or last author, respectively; however, analagous proportions were only 58.7%, 36.8%, and 29.1% among 100 687 publications about low-income countries. Proportions of publications with LMIC-affiliated authors increased over time, yet this observation was driven by high research activity and representation among upper middle-income countries. Between-country variation in representation was observed, even within income status categories. We invite comment regarding these findings, particularly from voices underrepresented in this field.
许多人呼吁在全球卫生研究中更多地纳入来自中低收入国家（LMICs）的研究人员，但目前尚不清楚这种情况的程度。先前的研究是针对期刊、学科或地区的，主要依赖于手动审查，并且产生的估计值因无法广泛评估文献而有所不同。我们对与中低收入国家有关联的研究人员在已发表的全球卫生研究中的贡献进行了大规模调查，并研究了这种贡献是否随时间而变化。我们搜索了曾被世界银行归类为低收入、中下收入或中上收入国家的国家的名称的标题、摘要和关键词，并将我们的搜索范围限制在 2000 年至 2017 年期间在与健康科学相关的期刊上发表的文章。从爱思唯尔/Scopus 获得出版物元数据并在统计软件中进行分析。我们计算了与任何中低收入国家有联系的作者撰写的出版物的比例，以及标题/摘要/关键词中确定的相同中低收入国家的比例，以及按年份、国家和国家最常见的收入状况进行的分层分析。我们分析了 786779 篇出版物，发现其中 86.0%至少有一位与中低收入国家有关联的作者，而 77.2%和 71.2%的出版物分别有一位中低收入国家有关联的第一或最后一位作者；然而，在 100687 篇关于低收入国家的出版物中，这一比例仅为 58.7%、36.8%和 29.1%。具有中低收入国家有关联作者的出版物比例随着时间的推移而增加，但这一观察结果是由中上收入国家的高研究活动和代表性驱动的。即使在收入状况类别中，也观察到了国家间代表性的差异。我们邀请对此发现发表评论，特别是来自该领域代表性不足的声音。
