ArticleBMJ global health2021
How global is global health research? A large-scale analysis of trends in authorship.
Article in BMJ global health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 62 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
62 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Psychological interventions targeting mental health and the mother-child relationship in autism: Systematic review and meta-analysis.Developmental medicine and child neurology · 2023Pooled it
- Authorship representation in global emergency medicine: a bibliometric analysis from 2016 to 2020.BMJ global health · 2022Pooled it
- Echo Chambers: Bias and Representation in Cardiac Imaging Datasets for Artificial Intelligence.Current cardiology reports · 2026Review
- Systematic Review of Pharmacist-Administered Paediatric Vaccinations in Low- and Lower-Middle-Income Countries.Vaccines · 2026Review
- Cleft Lip and Palate Publishing Trends From Authors in Low- and Middle-Income Countries in Cleft and Craniofacial Journals.The Cleft palate-craniofacial journal : official publication of the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association · 2026Article
- Article
- A bibliometric analysis of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on diabetes mellitus: global research trends from scopus database (1988-2024).Cardiovascular diabetology. Endocrinology reports · 2026Review
- Gendered male and high-income country authors dominate publication at a One Health research organization.PloS one · 2026Article
- Patient and author diversity and representation in studies supporting the European Respiratory Society/European Society of Intensive Care Medicine/European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases/Asociación Latinoamericana de Tórax severe community-acquired pneumonia guidelines.Respiratory research & clinical practice · 2026Article
- Global surgery research: defend or denounce? Focus on the ethics of research in low- and middle-income countries.The British journal of surgery · 2025Article
- The Youth Fitness International Test (YFIT) battery for monitoring and surveillance among children and adolescents: A modified Delphi consensus project with 169 experts from 50 countries and territories.Journal of sport and health science · 2025Article
- Assessing patterns of authorship of low- and middle-income countries in global commercial clinical trials in oncology.Globalization and health · 2025Article
- A scoping review of equity toolkits for international academic partnerships.International journal for equity in health · 2025Article
- A scoping review of equity toolkits for international academic partnerships.International journal for equity in health · 2025Article
- Global disparities in the introduction, scale-up, and effectiveness evaluation of COVID-19 vaccines.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Navigating the challenges of surgical research in low-and-middle income settings.American journal of surgery · 2025Article
- Periodontal diseases in Africa.Periodontology 2000 · 2025Review
- Authorship Inequity in Global Health Research Conducted in Low- and Middle-Income Countries and Published in High-Income Country Family Medicine Journals.Annals of family medicine · 2025Article
- Dental fear and dental anxiety: bibliometric analysis of the 100 most frequently cited papers.Acta odontologica latinoamericana : AOL · 2025Article
- Towards inclusive authorship: Analyzing author representation in PLOS Global Public Health front matter content.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
2 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.