Building global capacity for inclusivity in academic publishing: preliminary evidence

Inclusivity is an essential and often under-appreciated factor for advancing population health goals globally. For example, people in living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) bear up to 90% of the world's burden of preventable diseases, yet thy only have access to 10% of global research funding. Similarly, people living in LMICs often lack access to protected time that adequate funding for academic scholarship facilitates. In other words, scholars living in LMICs often do not get paid at work to do their research and must find the time to engage in research outside work hours. Consequently, many potential scholars living in LMICs do not participate sufficiently in research and scholarship for them to be eligible for the higher echelons of academic publishing, such as membership of editorial boards of reputable journals, or mentorship from leading scholars in their field. Because of these issues, they may also face greater challenges in getting promoted in their academic careers.

This means that the voices of people from LMICs are often under-represented in the research agenda on an international scale, whether it’s regarding the health and social outcomes that concern them the most, or the research method contributions they do not get the opportunity to make. This lack of inclusivity across the domains of people, methods and outcomes makes building capacity for health promotion and disease prevention particularly difficult in LMICs, and this also applies to disadvantaged areas within high-income countries. This lack of inclusivity in academic publishing is due, in part, to major barriers to capacity building, such as insufficient financial support, a dearth of rigorous research methods training opportunities, and disparities in mentorship for scholarly publishing.

At the Northeast Institute for Evidence Synthesis and Translation: A JBI Centre of Excellence at the Rutgers School of Nursing, we developed a JBI-funded project that aims to address this capacity building problem, by establishing a:

• training pipeline to assist qualified health scholars residing in LMICs in developing comprehensive evidence synthesis skills, and
• scholarly pathway to facilitate access to and success in academic publishing for these scholars.

This is a two-year project whose implementation began in July 2023 as a collaborative effort between our JBI Centre and AJPM Focus, a journal published by Elsevier on behalf of the American College of Preventive Medicine and the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research. During the project period, our centre plans to train one cohort of 12 to 15 scholars from LMICs every six months for two years (for a total of 50 LMIC scholars by the end of the project), via our JBI comprehensive systematic review training program (CSRTP). We will also provide ongoing scholarly support for those who wish to publish a JBI systematic review in JBI Evidence Synthesis, one of JBI’s journals. Upon completion of their CSRTP training, these project participants will each be paired with a mentor from the AJPM Focus editorial board, an intentionally, highly diverse and inclusive group that many of them will be offered the opportunity to join, depending on their professional interests and their performance during their participation in the project. All project components are to be provided to all LMIC participants at zero cost to them, thanks to the support of JBI.

The proposed training program will address several important key equity priorities of evidence and global health equity. First, by creating a pipeline for health scholars from LMICs to undergo free evidence synthesis training and mentorship with support from the Northeast Institute for Evidence Synthesis and Translation JBI Centre, this project will help:

• build local capacity within LMICs to produce high-quality scholarship, thereby improving the likelihood that these scholars will be better engaged in the co-production of research-based evidence
• enhance collaborative international research networks within and between JBI and these scholars, thereby ensuring that their views are brought to the forefront of evidence prioritisation and production efforts that involve systematic review methods
• promote evidence-based health care worldwide, thereby supporting greater equity in evidence synthesis efforts globally.

Second, an accompanying structured and guided pathway into academic publishing, facilitated by AJPM Focus, will provide mentorship and networking opportunities for these participants. This includes:

• mentored peer-review training with direct feedback from experts, using both Elsevier’s well-established and free online Researcher Academy Certified Peer Reviewer Course, and practice peer reviewing a real paper submitted to AJPM Focus
• networking with leading prevention scholars who are current members of the AJPM Focus editorial board (the members of the journal’s editorial board are active scholars in a variety of prominent institutions, such as the Centers for Disease Control, various universities, healthcare and public health systems, all of which are primarily based in the United States, where the journal is located)
• an offer for some of the LMIC participants to join the editorial board of AJPM Focus and continue collaborating with the prevention scholars on this board, thereby helping to mitigate power imbalances that exist between scholars from high-income countries and LMICs in academic publishing.

As of September 2023, we have provided training in JBI systematic review methods to 12 scholars from the following LMIC countries: Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Rwanda. Many of the participants have also already completed the Elsevier-certified peer-reviewer course, and a team of three of these participants has developed a proposal for a JBI systematic review that they are seeking to conduct and publish in JBI Evidence Synthesis. The next steps in the coming weeks will be to engage each of these 12 participants in a real peer-review task, and in mentorship and networking with members of the AJPM Focus editorial board.

By addressing the stated objectives, this project will help remove two key barriers to access in academic publishing (i.e. lack of research and scholarly training opportunities, and lack of mentorship and networking relationships), while at the same time building local capacity within LMICs for evidence synthesis and related scholarly and research endeavours. We think that our project, and others like it, can help address some of the systemic inequities that scholars living in LMICs face in academic publishing. We are excited to see this project launch and we look forward to seeing these participants take flight in academic publishing.

Authors
Yuri Jadotte, Susan Salmond, Cheryl Holly

Disclaimer
The views expressed in this World EBHC Day Blog, as well as any errors or omissions, are the sole responsibility of the author and do not represent the views of the World EBHC Day Steering Committee, Official Partners or Sponsors; nor does it imply endorsement by the aforementioned parties.