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Authorship for research from Africa, 2014-2015: a bibliometric analysis Nicholas H. Neufeld [1], Herve Momo Jeufack [2], Bethany Hedt-Gauthier [3], Jimmy Volmink [4], Miriam Shuchman [1] [1] University of Toronto, [2] Accenture, [3] Harvard Medical School, [4] Stellenbosch University
Introduction
Results
Conclusions
Power imbalances complicate partnerships between lowand middle-income country (LMIC) researchers and their collaborators from high-income countries. To quantify this issue, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of recent health research in LMICs relating country affiliations of the authors to their authorship position in the publication.
We identified 2094 papers published in the specified time period with the majority of papers coming from South Africa (290), Ethiopia (260), Uganda (243), and Kenya (233).
Authors from high-income countries dominate the highest ranking authorship positions in LMIC-based collaborative health research about sub-Saharan Africa. In our database, the majority of authors in the prestigious senior or last author position are from highincome countries and credit for first author position is evenly distributed between authors from the LMIC country of paper’s focus and NA/EU authors, despite the majority of authors coming from the LMIC of paper’s focus.
Number of Publications by Country Specifically, we compared authorship position of authors from LMICs in sub-Saharan Africa to that of authors from high-income countries in the United States, Canada, and the European Union.
Inequity in African Authorship
We searched PubMed for articles on LMIC-related health research using search terms containing “health” and MeSH specification of “sub-Saharan Africa.” We restricted analysis to papers published from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2015. We searched abstracts to identify country of paper’s focus and only included papers focused on a single country and with author affiliations specified.
Percentage of Authorship Position
Methods 55 50 45
40 35 Author from Country of Paper's Focus
Percent of Publications
First Author
Author from EU/NA
Middle Author
Last Author
Of the 2094 articles identified: • 11.5% of papers had no author from the country of paper’s focus; • 37.8% of papers had fewer than 50% of authors from the country of paper’s focus; • 50.3% of all authors are from the same country as the paper's focus; however, these individuals are significantly less likely to occupy the first or senior positions (p
Introduction
Results
Conclusions
Power imbalances complicate partnerships between lowand middle-income country (LMIC) researchers and their collaborators from high-income countries. To quantify this issue, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of recent health research in LMICs relating country affiliations of the authors to their authorship position in the publication.
We identified 2094 papers published in the specified time period with the majority of papers coming from South Africa (290), Ethiopia (260), Uganda (243), and Kenya (233).
Authors from high-income countries dominate the highest ranking authorship positions in LMIC-based collaborative health research about sub-Saharan Africa. In our database, the majority of authors in the prestigious senior or last author position are from highincome countries and credit for first author position is evenly distributed between authors from the LMIC country of paper’s focus and NA/EU authors, despite the majority of authors coming from the LMIC of paper’s focus.
Number of Publications by Country Specifically, we compared authorship position of authors from LMICs in sub-Saharan Africa to that of authors from high-income countries in the United States, Canada, and the European Union.
Inequity in African Authorship
We searched PubMed for articles on LMIC-related health research using search terms containing “health” and MeSH specification of “sub-Saharan Africa.” We restricted analysis to papers published from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2015. We searched abstracts to identify country of paper’s focus and only included papers focused on a single country and with author affiliations specified.
Percentage of Authorship Position
Methods 55 50 45
40 35 Author from Country of Paper's Focus
Percent of Publications
First Author
Author from EU/NA
Middle Author
Last Author
Of the 2094 articles identified: • 11.5% of papers had no author from the country of paper’s focus; • 37.8% of papers had fewer than 50% of authors from the country of paper’s focus; • 50.3% of all authors are from the same country as the paper's focus; however, these individuals are significantly less likely to occupy the first or senior positions (p
