How to address the geographical bias in academic publishing

The commitment by the global health community to promote equity in research, publishing and practice is a welcome addition to the discourse on decolonising global health. Bibliometric analysis of authorship and prime authorship positioning (first and last) has demonstrated that researchers from low-income and middle-income countries or the Global South are under-represented in academic publishing highlighting the need for diversification. Concomitantly, journals have made efforts to ensure equitable research collaboration and authorship practices, to diversify editorial boards, and to improve accessibility of research through open access (OA) policies to increase Global South representation.

However, there has been little attention paid to where research is disseminated. Academic publishing is dominated by journals from Western Europe and North America—henceforth WENA or the Global North—where major publishers and citation databases are based. Global North journals are often associated with international and global-level prestige, while Global South journals are presumed to be local, national or regional in scope. Despite increased OA publication, many peer-reviewed articles remain behind paywalls and out of reach of the very communities on whom the research was conducted and from whom data was collected. While OA increases access to research, it also places an unfair economic burden for Global South researchers whose research environments rarely provide funds to cover article processing charges (APC) typically between US$1500 and US$2500 and as high as US$11 000.

The disparity in the geographical distribution of academic publishing perpetuates a cycle in which the global health research agenda is determined in the Global North, knowledge production occurs in the Global South, and dissemination reverts to the Global North due to the limited scope of Global South journals. We argue that disrupting this colonial model of knowledge extraction is pivotal to the decolonising discourse. We must be intentional in prioritising strategies that improve the reach of Global South knowledge. We exhibit how academic publishing centres the Global North, and how the increasing monopolisation of publishing is a barrier for national and regional journals. We provide suggestions to progressively move journals in the periphery towards the centre of the global stage by strengthening Global South knowledge platforms.

Juliana A Bol, Ashley Sheffel, Nukhba Zia, Ankita Meghani – How to address the geographical bias in academic publishing: BMJ Global Health 2023;8:e013111.