Expanding equity horizons in knowledge sharing: How can global health journals level up?
In the past decade, the global health community has recognized and increasingly challenged unfair knowledge practices to address epistemic injustice within the field. Bhakuni and Abimbola frame epistemic injustice as “pervasive wrongs related to knowledge production, use, and circulation in global health.” Structural barriers within academic publishing have resulted in perpetuating harmful power hierarchies in knowledge creation and sharing–dictating who is seen as an expert, and whose knowledge is prioritized and recognized as valid. These structural barriers include high article processing charges (APCs), paywalls that limit access, dominance of English as the language of publication, funding that is disproportionately concentrated in, or routed through Global North institutions. Despite identifying these barriers, we have missed many opportunities to systemically change the global health academic publishing landscape.
Building a counterculture to dismantle structural barriers perpetuating epistemic injustice continues to be an uphill battle. Estimates in 2024 show that profit margins of academic publishing were as high as 40%, surpassing even silicon-valley tech companies such as Google. While current efforts include journals restructuring their APCs, editors-in-chief intentionally committing to improving representation, and centring community voices–meaningful realization of equity within the academic publication space remains a distant goal. Recognizing that shifting systems to centre epistemic justice is a continuous commitment, we argue for pathways that can build on existing foundations and when necessary dismantle existing norms and systems. In this commentary, our goal is to envision pathways forward and to instil a sustainable sense of urgency and a continual commitment. Thus, suggested pathways include two categories: immediate efforts that can provide short to medium-term results and ambitious long-term goals we can aspire towards. Global health cannot fully understand, measure, or address the problems it seeks to solve while the production and circulation of knowledge remain structurally uneven; epistemic justice is therefore not a “nice-to-have”, but a prerequisite for better science and better health outcomes.
Bandara S, Sant Fruchtman C, Joubert N, Zinsstag L, Banerjee A, Beaulieu IM, Tetui M and Qiang V (2026) Expanding equity horizons in knowledge sharing: How can global health journals level up?. Int. J. Public Health 71:1609678. doi: 10.3389/ijph.2026.1609678