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. 2021 Mar;11(1):92-97.
doi: 10.2991/jegh.k.200325.001. Epub 2020 Apr 8.

Geographic, Subject, and Authorship Trends among LMIC-based Scientific Publications in High-impact Global Health and General Medicine Journals: A 30-Month Bibliometric Analysis

Marium Ghani  1 , Rowan Hurrell  2 , Avelino C Verceles  3 , Michael T McCurdy  3 , Alfred Papali  4   5
Affiliations

Geographic, Subject, and Authorship Trends among LMIC-based Scientific Publications in High-impact Global Health and General Medicine Journals: A 30-Month Bibliometric Analysis

Marium Ghani et al. J Epidemiol Glob Health. 2021 Mar.

Abstract

The globalization of medical research and global health's increasing popularity worldwide have resulted in greater geographic, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity of studies published in the scientific literature. Yet the geographic distribution, authorship representation, and subject trends among Low-/Low-Middle-Income Country (LIC/LMIC)-based scientific publications remain largely unknown. This analysis assesses these gaps in knowledge. We performed a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of all scientific articles published between January 2014 and June 2016 in the four most prominent general medicine and five most prominent general global health journals based on impact factor. The African region, containing 24% of the global LIC/LMIC population, accounted for 49.9% of all publications. Corresponding authors with either exclusive or joint appointment to a LIC/LMIC institution were present in 26.2% of all included articles. Over one-quarter (28.8%) of all publications did not list a local author. Nearly two-thirds (62.1%) of articles published in global health journals and roughly half (52.4%) in general medicine journals involved infectious diseases. Non-HIV infectious disease studies were by far the most frequent subject areas across all journals. The trends identified in this study may help to inform the evolution and prioritization of future research efforts, thereby allowing global health to remain truly global.

Keywords: Global health; equity; geographic; impact factor; journal; low income; low-middle income; publication.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of global health publications per 100 million inhabitants by World Health Organization geographic region. Each region is scaled by 2014 World Bank population. Dark colors within each region represent LICs and LMICs, light colors represent UMICs and HICs. Credit: Hugo Ahlenius, https://nordpil.com
Figure 2
Figure 2
Averaged annual distribution of global health publications by LIC/LMIC. Credit: Hugo Ahlenius, https://nordpil.com
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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