Authorship equity in global health research: who gets the credit at University of California, San Francisco?

Abstract

Authorship inequity exists in global health research and can be representative of unequal partnerships. Previous studies showed that low-income and middle-income country (LMIC) authors are under-represented in publications from global collaborative research between LMIC and high-income countries (HIC). However, there are little data on trends for how specific HIC institutions are performing concerning equitable authorship. We used Web of Science to find published articles affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where an LMIC was referred to in the title, abstract or keywords from 2008 to 2021. The country affiliation of each author for all included articles was grouped based on World Bank data. A total of 5805 articles were included. On average, 53.6% (n=3109) of UCSF affiliated articles had at least one low-income country (LIC) or LMIC author; however, this number increased from 43.2% (n=63) in 2008 to 63.3% (n=421) in 2021. Overall, 16.3% (n=948) of UCSF affiliated articles had an LIC or LMIC researcher as the first author, 18.8% (n=1,059) had an LIC or LMIC researcher as second author, and 14.2% (n=820) had an LIC or LMIC researcher as last author. As long as manuscripts produced by UCSF have no LIC or LMIC authors included the university’s commitment to authentic equity is undermined. Global health partnerships cannot be equitable without changing authorship trends between HIC and LMIC institutions.