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Authorship in paediatric research conducted in low- and middle-income countries: parity or parasitism?

Chris A Rees1, Heather Lukolyo2,3, Elizabeth M Keating2,4

  • 1Division of Emergency Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.

Tropical Medicine & International Health : TM & IH
|September 1, 2017
PubMed

Insights

Global health research partnerships are growing, but authorship parity in pediatric studies from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is not always achieved. High-income country authors often dominate lead positions, even when LMIC authors contribute significantly.

Area of Science:

  • Global Health
  • Medical Research Ethics
  • International Collaboration

Background:

  • Global health research has seen a significant increase in partnerships between high-income countries (HICs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) over the past two decades.
  • The complexity of these international research collaborations necessitates an examination of authorship practices.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To assess authorship parity, defined as equitable representation and author order, in pediatric research originating from LMICs.
  • To identify instances of authorship parasitism, where no authors from the study countries are included.

Main Methods:

  • A systematic review of articles published between 2006 and 2015 in the top four pediatric journals by Eigenfactor score.
  • Inclusion criteria focused on articles from LMICs, abstracting data on author affiliations, author order, funding, and study design.
  • Statistical analysis included Student's t-tests and chi-square tests with Fisher's exact test and Monte Carlo estimates.

Main Results:

  • Of 1243 eligible articles, 95.9% had at least one author from an LMIC. However, 40.4% of multicountry studies lacked authors from every involved LMIC.
  • Authors were predominantly affiliated with upper-middle-income countries (41.7%) and HICs (32.7%), with significantly fewer from lower-middle-income (15.5%) and low-income countries (5.4%).
  • In studies from low-income countries, authors from HICs were more frequently listed as first or last authors compared to authors from the study countries (P < 0.001).

Conclusions:

  • Authorship parasitism was infrequent overall but notable in multicountry studies.
  • In pediatric research conducted in low-income countries, authors from HICs disproportionately held first and last author positions.
  • The study emphasizes the need for authorship parity, ensuring equitable representation and author order when LMIC authors make substantial contributions to research.
Abstract

Keywords:
authorshipglobal healthpaediatricpaternité d'auteurpédiatrierechercheresearchsanté mondiale

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