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Authorship in studies conducted in low-and-middle income countries and published by Reproductive Health: advancing equitable global health research collaborations.
Reproductive Health ( IF 3.6 ) Pub Date : 2020-01-30 , DOI: 10.1186/s12978-020-0858-7
Verónica Pingray ₁ , Vanesa Ortega ₁ , Sanni Yaya _{2,

3} , José M Belizán ₁

Affiliation

Reproductive Health has an interest in reproductive health status globally, but it has particular interest in phenomena affecting disadvantaged populations. This is the reason why this journal encourages submissions from researchers conducting studies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Authorship usually reflects research leadership [1]. At the same time, authorship implies responsibility and accountability for published work [2]. In addition, authorship has important academic, social, and financial implications, particularly for the first, second and last authors. In the context of global health research, authorship might also indicate the level of balance within collaborative research and the success of capacity-building [1].

Researchers who have made substantive contributions to a study or a paper should receive credit as authors. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends that authorship is based on the following criteria: a) substantial contributions to the conception, design, acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; b) drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; c) provide the final approval of the version to be published; and d) agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work [2]. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. ICMJE recommends sharing co-authorship with colleagues in the locations where the research is conducted. However, the ICMJE does not establish criteria to determine the order in which authors are listed. Such ordering involves differential credits, and it should be decided on collectively by the research team [2].

We performed a descriptive analysis of all research articles published during 2018 in Reproductive Health in order to: a) describe the location where studies were conducted; b) determine the location of authors’ affiliation in studies conducted in LMICs; and c) explore the type of credit that researchers from LMICs received in collaborative research.

During 2018, 219 articles were published in Reproductive Health. After excluding study protocols, reviews, commentaries, editorials and corrections, 157 research articles were included (Additional file 1: Figure S1). Among research studies, 123 (81%) were conducted in at least one LMIC. (Table 1) The region with the largest number of published studies was Sub-Saharan Africa (n = 81, 53%) (Fig. 1). All the other regions of the world published at least 5 times fewer studies. Overall, 133 studies were conducted in 47 single countries, and 19 studies were conducted in two or more countries.

Table 1 Countries where published studies in Reproductive Health during 2018 were conducted

Full size table

Among the studies conducted in LMICs (n = 123), 86 (70%) were collaborations between authors affiliated to organizations from more than one income group (Table 2). Sixteen (13%) studies were conducted exclusively by local researchers from LICs, and 21 (17%) by researchers from MICs. Although collaborative studies were the most frequent type (70%), only 45 (40%) of the publications combined first, second and last authors (from different country income groups).

Analyzing only collaborative studies (n = 86), it was observed that 49 (57%) publications combine the origin of the first, second and last author (from different country income groups). In contrast, 24 (28%) of collaborative studies assigned first, second and last authorship to researchers from high-income countries, while 13 (15%) assigned these three positions to authors from low or middle-income countries.

Table 2 Authors´ affiliations of studies conducted in LMICs published in 2018 in Reproductive Health during 2018

Full size table

Finally, we analyzed the distribution of first, second and last authors according to the income group of their affiliated country, in studies conducted in LMICs (n = 123) (Fig. 2). We observed that 51 (42%) of first authors were from HICs and 59 (48%) of last authors were from HICs, while second author position was more equally distributed among low-income, middle- income and high-income countries (29%, 38% and 34% respectively).

This analysis shows that most research studies published by Reproductive Health during 2018 were conducted in LMICs. At the same time, studies conducted in LMICs seemed to be more frequently conceived and driven by high-income-country authors. Although authorship tends to demonstrate some balance in collaborative research conducted in LMICs, first and last authorship are more frequently assigned to HIC researchers. About one third of collaborative research conducted in LMICs still has first, second and last authorship assigned to HIC researchers.

Multiple barriers might be influencing the observed results. First, LMICs usually present a disadvantaged and unequal position in terms of language fluency and writing skills that could affect publication success and their contribution during the development of manuscripts [3, 4]. Though Reproductive Health accepts abstracts and even full texts in languages other than English, the original manuscript--the one subjected to editor and reviewer evaluations--must be written in English. Despite the disadvantaged situation of researchers from LMICs, Reproductive Health, like most journals, has no capacity to offer free copyediting services or support for writing manuscripts. Second, there is low awareness of ICMJE guidelines among LMICs authors and low used of a structured application of the recommended authorship criteria [5,6,7].

Researchers affiliated to organizations in HICs have advantages in terms of obtaining funding, partially due to their affiliations’ credibility and publication background. Somehow, this could create a virtuous cycle for researchers affiliated to organizations in HICs, which might contribute to them receiving the required support for their research questions and plans.

There is a global responsibility when conducting collaborative research to include LMICs researchers in terms of recognizing the efforts and contributions made to complete work; as well as build capacity, in order to increase the possibilities of LMIC researchers being included in the virtuous cycle of receiving support to conduct studies locally.

Considering the unbalanced training, access to funding and publication, a local research capability plan should be part of collaborative work. Ideally, funding agencies committed to increasing research equality, should be encouraged to develop research capabilities plans. In such way, there is also a need for the development and maintenance of research centres in LMICs that encourage and strengthen multidisciplinary teams of researchers to conduct independent research [8]. This would be an investment to balance the funding of future research questions generated in both HICs and LMICs.

In addition, active dissemination of fee waivers should be promoted within open access journals for LMICs and collaborative academic programs that provide support to LMICs researchers.

Further research should be conducted to better explain trends and factors influencing authorship in studies conducted in LMICs, while, at the same time, the research community reflects on our active commitment to generating equitable collaborations in global research.

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Affiliations

Department of Mother and Child Health Research, Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy (IECS-CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Verónica Pingray
- , Vanesa Ortega
- & José M. Belizán
The George Institute for Global Health, The University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Sanni Yaya
School of International Development and Global Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
- Sanni Yaya

Authors

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Contributions

VP and JMB conceived, and coordinated the study. VO carried out data collection. SY provided comments and edits. All the authors participated in the design and critically revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Verónica Pingray.

Competing interests

Sanni Yaya and José M. Belizán are Editors-in-Chief and Veronica Pingray is Managing Editor of Reproductive Health.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Total number of publications in Reproductive Health during 2018 and number of included studies in this analysis.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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Pingray, V., Ortega, V., Yaya, S. et al. Authorship in studies conducted in low-and-middle income countries and published by Reproductive Health: advancing equitable global health research collaborations. Reprod Health 17, 18 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-020-0858-7

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Published: 30 January 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-020-0858-7

中文翻译：

在中低收入国家进行的研究的著作权，并由生殖健康出版：促进公平的全球卫生研究合作。

生殖健康在全球范围内对生殖健康状况感兴趣，但对影响处境不利人群的现象特别感兴趣。这就是为什么该期刊鼓励在中低收入国家（LMIC）进行研究的研究人员投稿的原因。

作者通常反映出研究的领导力[1]。同时，作者身份意味着对已发表作品的责任和问责制[2]。此外，作者身份具有重要的学术，社会和财务影响，特别是对于第一，第二和最后一位作者。在全球卫生研究的背景下，作者身份可能还表明了合作研究内部的平衡水平以及能力建设的成功[1]。

对研究或论文做出实质性贡献的研究人员应获得作者的荣誉。国际医学期刊编辑委员会（ICMJE）建议作者身份基于以下标准：a）对数据的概念，设计，获取，分析或解释做出重大贡献；b）为重要的智力内容起草或对其进行批判性修改；c）提供将要发布的版本的最终批准；d）同意对工作的各个方面负责[2]。这些作者资格标准旨在为应得的荣誉并能够承担工作责任的人保留作者资格。ICMJE建议与进行研究的地点的同事共享共同著作。然而，ICMJE没有建立确定作者列出顺序的标准。这种排序涉及差异信用，应由研究团队共同决定[2]。

我们对2018年《生殖健康》中发表的所有研究文章进行了描述性分析，以：a）描述进行研究的地点; b）确定在中低收入国家进行的研究中作者隶属的位置；c）探索中低收入国家的研究人员在合作研究中获得的学分类型。

2018年，《生殖健康》发表了219篇文章。在排除研究方案，评论，评论，社论和更正后，包括157条研究文章（附加文件1：图S1）。在研究中，至少有一个LMIC进行了123次（占81％）。（表1）已发表研究最多的地区是撒哈拉以南非洲（n = 81，53％）（图1）。世界上所有其他地区发表的研究至少少5倍。总体而言，在47个单一国家中进行了133个研究，在两个或多个国家中进行了19个研究。

表1进行了2018年出版的生殖健康研究的国家

全尺寸表

在低收入和中低收入国家中进行的研究（n = 123）中，有86个（70％）是来自一个以上收入组的组织的作者之间的合作（表2）。十六个（13％）研究仅由LICs的本地研究人员进行，而21个（17％）由MIC的研究人员进行。尽管协作研究是最频繁的类型（70％），但只有45种（40％）的出版物组合了第一作者，第二作者和最后作者（来自不同国家的收入群体）。

仅分析合作研究（n = 86），观察到49种出版物（57％）结合了第一作者，第二作者和最后作者的来历（来自不同国家的收入群体）。相比之下，有24个（28％）的合作研究将第一，第二和最后作者分配给高收入国家的研究人员，而13个（15％）将这三个职位分配给来自中低收入国家的作者。

在发表于2018年低收入国家进行的研究表2 Authors'隶属关系生殖健康在2018

全尺寸表

最后，在中低收入国家（n = 123）中进行的研究中，我们根据所属国家的收入组分析了第一，第二和最后作者的分布（图2）。我们观察到，第一作者的51（42％）来自HIC，最后作者的59（48％）来自HIC，而第二作者的位置在低收入，中等收入和高收入国家中更平均地分布（29 ％，38％和34％）。

分析表明，2018年生殖健康发表的大多数研究都是在中低收入国家进行的。同时，在中低收入国家进行的研究似乎是由高收入国家的作者设想和推动的。尽管在中低收入国家进行的合作研究中作者身份往往表现出一定程度的平衡，但第一作者和最后作者通常被分配给HIC研究人员。在中低收入国家进行的合作研究中，约有三分之一仍然是分配给HIC研究人员的第一，第二和最后作者。

多个障碍可能会影响观察到的结果。首先，在语言流利度和写作技巧方面，中低收入国家通常处于不利和不平等的地位，这可能会影响出版成功及其在手稿开发过程中的贡献[3，4]。尽管生殖健康可以接受除英语以外的其他语言的摘要甚至全文，但原始手稿（必须经过编辑和审阅者的评估）必须用英语书写。尽管中低收入和中等收入国家的研究人员处境不利，但生殖健康像大多数期刊一样，没有能力提供免费的文案编辑服务或对撰写手稿的支持。其次，中低收入国家的作者对ICMJE指南的了解不高，对推荐的作者资格标准的结构化应用也很少使用[5,6,7]。

HIC所属组织的研究人员在获得资金方面具有优势，部分原因是其所属组织的信誉和发表背景。不知何故，这可能会为HIC组织中的附属研究人员创造一个良性循环，这可能有助于他们获得对其研究问题和计划所需的支持。

在开展合作研究以使中低收入国家的研究人员包括在内时，全球责任在于承认完成工作所作出的努力和贡献；以及能力建设，以增加LMIC研究人员被纳入接受当地开展研究的良性循环的可能性。

考虑到培训不平衡，获得资金和出版的机会，地方研究能力计划应成为合作工作的一部分。理想情况下，应鼓励致力于提高研究平等性的资助机构制定研究能力计划。这样，还需要在LMIC中开发和维护研究中心，以鼓励和加强研究人员的多学科团队进行独立研究[8]。这将是一项投资，以平衡在HIC和LMIC中产生的未来研究问题的资金。

此外，应在中低收入国家的开放获取期刊和为中低收入国家的研究人员提供支持的合作学术计划中倡导积极传播费用减免。

应该进行进一步的研究，以更好地解释在LMIC中进行的研究中影响作者身份的趋势和因素，与此同时，研究界对我们在全球研究中建立公平合作的积极承诺进行了反思。

1。
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下载参考

隶属关系

阿根廷布宜诺斯艾利斯临床有效性和健康政策研究所（IECS-CONICET）母子健康研究系
- 维罗妮卡·平瑞
- ，瓦内萨·奥尔特加
- ＆JoséM.Belizán
英国牛津牛津大学乔治全球健康研究所
- 桑妮亚亚
渥太华大学社会科学学院国际发展与全球研究学院，加拿大渥太华
- 桑妮亚亚

作者

在以下位置搜索VerónicaPingray：
- 考研•
- 谷歌学术
在以下位置搜索Vanesa Ortega：
- 考研•
- 谷歌学术
在以下位置搜索Sanni Yaya：
- 考研•
- 谷歌学术
在以下位置搜索JoséM.Belizán：
- 考研•
- 谷歌学术

会费

副总裁和JMB构思并协调了研究。VO进行了数据收集。SY提供了评论和编辑。所有作者都参与了设计并严格修改了手稿。所有作者阅读并认可的终稿。

通讯作者

对应于VerónicaPingray。

利益争夺

Sanni Yaya和JoséM.Belizán是主编，Veronica Pingray是生殖健康的执行编辑。

发行人注意

对于出版的地图和机构隶属关系中的管辖权主张，Springer Nature保持中立。

附加文件1：图S1。2018年生殖健康出版物总数以及该分析中纳入研究的数量。

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