The contribution of authors from low- and middle-income countries to top-tier mental health journals

Abstract

Background: Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have been consistently under-represented in the pool of contributors to academic journals on health. For the past two decades, prominent voices within the psychiatric profession have called for better representation of LMICs in the interest of advancing the understanding of mental health globally and benefiting health systems in these countries. Objective: To investigate the absolute and relative representation of authors affiliated to institutes from LMICs in the most influential journals on mental health in 2019. Method: Thirty top-ranking journals on mental health based on Scimago Journal Rank were selected, and all papers other than correspondence and letters to the editor published in those journals in 2019 were examined to extract the country of affiliation of each of their authors and their position (corresponding author, first author, second author). Results: Of the 4022 articles examined, 3720 articles (92.5%) were written exclusively by authors from high-income countries (HICs); 302 (7.5%) featured one or more authors from a LMIC along with those from HICs; 91 (2.2%) featured authors only from one LMIC; and only 3 (0.07%) featured authors from more than one LMICs but without any co-author from a HIC. The ratio of articles by contributors from LMICs to all the articles published in 2019 in a given journal ranged from 0% to 19%. Of 1855 individual contributors from 45 LMICs, 1050 (56%) were from China. Conclusion: Despite the growth of the global health movement and frequent calls for academic inclusivity, LMICs were significantly under-represented among the authors of papers published in top-ranking journals on mental health in 2019.  

Building a postgraduate psychiatry training program in Liberia through cross-country collaborations: initiation stages, challenges, and opportunities

“…Fifth, there is a dire need to strengthen research capacity in resource-constrained settings. For decades, increasing research capacity has been a global health priority as it helps to strengthen health systems ( 48 , 49 ). Despite this, LMICs continue to experience inadequate funding, exclusion of local researchers in clinical trials carried out in their own countries, structural power imbalances, and a lack of training in research methods, amongst others ( 49 , 50 ).…”

“…For decades, increasing research capacity has been a global health priority as it helps to strengthen health systems ( 48 , 49 ). Despite this, LMICs continue to experience inadequate funding, exclusion of local researchers in clinical trials carried out in their own countries, structural power imbalances, and a lack of training in research methods, amongst others ( 49 , 50 ). In 2019, only 2% of publications in high-impact journals featured articles exclusively authored by researchers from LMICs, and about 8% featured collaborations between authors from LMICs and HICs ( 49 ).…”

Does diversity beget diversity? A scientometric analysis of over 150,000 studies and 49,000 authors published in high-impact medical journals between 2007 and 2022

“…Although LMICs account for 85% of the world’s population and 92% of the global disease burden 17 , articles published in high-IF journals are still predominantly written by authors affiliated with institutions located in HICs. This reality spans multiple fields of medicine, ranging from psychiatry 18 to surgery 19 to public health 20 . This discrepancy can be explained by the fact that HICs generally dedicate a higher proportion of their national budget to education 21,22 as well as to research and development 23,24 than LMICs; they also have a higher concentration of medical institutions and academic clinical research centers that build a strong(er) health research capacity 25 .…”

“…We focus on two dimensions: the author’s likely gender and the countries where their institutions are located. Prior studies investigating disparities in author representation have been primarily descriptive, and either journal-specific (i.e., surveying articles from only a single journal or a family of journals) 29–32 , article type-specific (e.g., limiting articles examined to commentaries) 33 , specialty-specific (i.e., surveying articles published in journals of only a specific field) 1,18–20,34,35 , or gap-specific (i.e., focusing on only gender or geographical disparities) 16,36,37 , limiting their conclusions to related contexts. Moreover, prior works have relied primarily on small datasets.…”

What Diverse Samples Can Teach Us About Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression

“…According to Thalmayer and colleagues (2021), only 11% of the world's population is represented in the top psychology journals with 60% percent of authors and samples specific to the United States. Further, only 3-6% of all published research articles on mental health include participants from low and middle-income countries (El Khoury et al, 2021;Gallegos et al, 2013;Haque & Kamal, 2019;Patel & Sumathipala, 2001). Given such limited representation, it is not surprising that the validity and robustness of psychological theories have been called into question.…”