Representation of authors and editors from poor countries

Editor—Keiser et al highlight the obvious under-representation of authors and editors from countries with low human development indexes in prestigious tropical medicine journals.¹ This shows the paradox of the greater burden of tropical disease afflicting people living in the underdeveloped world being studied, then published, by researchers in countries with a high development index.

Great obstacles confront researchers who live and work in countries that are poor in resources, and where diseases are prevalent, in conducting and publishing medical research into diseases of poverty.² These inequities are exacerbated by poor dissemination of and reduced access to quality medical research among clinicians in countries where these diseases are endemic.³ This may be ameliorated by allowing duplicate publication in local journals or forums of difficult to access articles from prestigious journals with high local relevance, for a lesser cost or for free.⁴ Journal space in high impact journals could be quarantined for articles on locally relevant medical research conducted by researchers from less developed countries. Publications could be actively solicited or commissioned from researchers who live and work in such countries in special focus issues.

Although quality clinical research flow from countries rich in research to countries poor in research is limited,⁵ the reverse also occurs. Awareness of health issues pertaining to less developed countries among clinicians in the developed world could be improved by increased presence of article summaries and links to publications of note originating from less developed countries within sections such as Journal Watch.