Academics must publish their discoveries in prestigious publications like Nature or Science in order to disseminate their findings to the scientific community and the general public.

Influence in the field is often measured by the number of publications a researcher has made.

There is so much pressure on scientists to publish high-quality research that the expression “publish or perish” has been coined. It is difficult for some groups of people, such as women and researchers from the global south, to succeed in scientific publishing because of the system’s inherent inequalities.

Based on their publications and social media activity, Reuters recently compiled a list of the 1,000 most “influential” climate experts in the world. There are just five African scientists on the list, which represents a massive under-representation of experts from the global south. In the meantime, just 122 out of the total of 1,000 authors are ladies.

Authorship biases suggest that the existing body of information on climate change and its implications is skewed towards the interests of male authors from the global north. As a result, vulnerable populations, particularly women and communities in developing countries, may be overlooked.

This map shows the gender and “country of affiliation” of the authors of 100 highly cited climate research papers from the past five years, which Carbon Brief has analyzed for biases in geographic and gender representation.

According to the study, there is a huge disparity in publication success between the north and the south. One percent of the authors are from Africa, whereas nearly three-quarters of the authors come from institutions in Europe or North America.

In addition, the study points out the gender discrepancy in climate-science publishing. There are just 12 out of the 100 papers analyzed that include female lead authors, according to the study.

To learn more about the challenges academics have faced, Carbon Brief spoke to a wide spectrum of scholars about the reasons for the lack of diversity in publication and their ideas for how to “decolonize” academia.

Carbon Brief used Google Scholar metrics to identify the gender and nationality of every author in the 100 most highly referenced climate research papers of 2016-20. This study includes more than 1,300 writers. (A further explanation of the approach and a link to the data are provided later in the article.)

According to this analysis, all writers are affiliated with institutions located in Europe (dark blue), North America, Oceania, Asia, South America, and Africa (yellow, red, and orange) (purple).

As a way to show how much each region contributed to the top 100 most-cited climate science publications between 2016 and 2020, we plotted the percentage of authors from each continent (purple). Carbon Brief’s Highcharts-created graph.
Only one in 10 authors is linked with an institution outside of North America, Europe, or Oceania, according to the findings of the study. Even though Africa is home to more than a quarter of the world’s population, it only accounts for less than one percent of the authors in this study.

A closer look at the data reveals that there are also inequalities within the continents themselves. For each country, a darker color implies a higher percentage of writers in the analysis. There are no countries in the analysis that were not represented by any authors.

This map shows that the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom account for more than half of all writers analyzed in this research (approximately 30 percent , 15 percent and 10 percent , respectively). This study found that nine out of every ten papers included at least one researcher from the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia.

While this map provides a wealth of information, the lack of countries from Africa and Asia is one of the more eye-opening aspects (shown in white). More than 50 countries comprise the continent of Africa, however only ten authors from South Africa are included in this study.

The UNESCO “Oliver Tambo” Chair of Human Rights’ postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Bellita Chitsamatanga, is a South African researcher at Fort Hare University. There are a number of elements that make the system more “friendly” for academics in South Africa, she says Carbon Brief. One of these aspects is the country’s “pay to publish” system, which pays academics for publishing in prestigious journals.

South African scholars are expected to publish in high-impact, recognized journals, but many other African countries focus on publishing in any publication, regardless of its reputation.

In contrast, nearly half of all researchers from the global south are from China, which accounted for about 6% of all researchers in the study. While South Africa’s scientific research system pays researchers bonuses if their work is published in “top-tier” journals, China’s scientific research system has paid researchers bonuses until recently.

For “Earth and environmental sciences research” in Nature portfolio journals, one analysis found that China has overtaken the United States. Academic publication in many other Asian nations – the majority of which are not included at all in the analysis – is much more diverse. According to this data, Japan is the next highest Asian country in authorship, with eight authors.

More than half of European countries are included in the analysis. Countries like the Netherlands and Germany have a significant number of authors in Europe, despite the fact that the UK has the most.

When looking at the publications’ lead authors (the first authors named), the above trends are much more obvious. Europe (blue), North America (green), Oceania (yellow), Asia (red), and South America (orange and purple) are the five continents with the most lead authors out of the 100 papers in total.

From 2016 through 2020, the total number of lead authors in the Top 100 most-cited climate research papers, from each continent. Carbon Brief’s Highcharts-created graph.
A researcher from either Africa or South America does not lead a paper in this analysis. Only seven papers are led by Asian authors, with China accounting for five of those seven papers.

An expert in charcoal research, Dr Tuyeni Mwampamba is a professor at the Institute of Ecosystems and Sustainability Research in Mexico. She has lived and worked in Mexico for over a decade, yet she earned her bachelor’s and doctorate degrees in the United States. She worked in Tanzania for four years between her undergraduate and graduate studies.

According to Carbon Brief, she found it “shocking and sad” that there were no lead authors from Africa or South America in the study.

Research in underdeveloped countries is typically hindered by a lack of money, a lack of English as an official language, and an unequal power dynamic between rich and poor countries.

A major problem in conducting climate studies from nations in the global south is the lack of funding for scientific study. There are no countries in Africa that spend more than 1% of their GDP on “research and development” while the United States spends more than 2%.

This disparity in funding implies that the majority of research on developing countries is conducted by organisations from the global north, rather than by local scientists. European and North American institutions got 78 percent of all financing for climate research on Africa between 1990 and 2020, whereas African institutions received only 14.5 percent of the total money. “

Universidad Nacional de Colombia professor Dolors Armenteras specializes in landscape ecology and is a researcher in the field. According to her interview with Carbon Brief, it is “really hard” to work with such low resources, adding that it is even more difficult for students, who “do not have funds, do not have grants, and do not have scholarships”.

Investing in new infrastructure is another requirement. Climate-modelling studies necessitate large amounts of computational power, which can be expensive to create and operate. As a result of a £1.2 billion investment from the government, the UK Met Office has announced enhancements to its supercomputer, which it hopes to be “the world’s most advanced dedicated to weather and climate.”

Collaborating with researchers in the global north can help scientists in the global south overcome challenges of finance and technology. Collaborative research between countries is on the rise. The ratio of overall publications, not only climate science, with authors from multiple nations climbed from 13 percent to 19 percent between 2000 and 2013.

Dr. Lisa Schipper is a researcher at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute. Scientists from affluent countries collect data “because field staff is really cheap,” she says, and those from richer nations with computing capability run the figures in cooperation between the global north and south.

Collaborations like these are typically unequal. An Indian climate scientist tells Carbon Brief that data alone isn’t enough to bring your name at the top of the list of authors. A researcher from a more developed country nearly invariably serves as the study’s primary author.

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When scholars from wealthy countries collaborate with those from poor countries, “asymmetries of power” can arise that are “really dangerous,” says Armenteras.

At the same time, she worked just as hard as her fellow principal investigators from the North, but without the budget and assistance that they allotted themselves.

According to Carbon Brief, “We don’t want to work for free,” says Armenteras. “We are not slaves,” he continues. In the end, she walked away from the endeavor.

Global South researchers are viewed as “assistants” rather than full-fledged scientists. They’re not given authorship even though they’re very much involved in collaborations,” Schipper says.

“Colonial,” “parachute,” or even “helicopter” science is another problem with cross-country scientific cooperation, in which certain scientists from the global north aim to extract resources and data from underdeveloped nations without contributing to local infrastructure or scientific competence.

Many scientists in the United States still adhere to the “old male professor deciding who can or cannot be an author” tradition, according to Adame. She goes on to say that as a result of this procedure, authors from developing nations may be underrepresented.

Researchers in Colombia, which Armenteras called “paradise for biodiversity data collection,” want their names to appear alongside “the big white guy” from a northern country in their papers. Because of this, she argues, they often “kowtow to people from abroad and collect data for them, or give their own data away.”

However, she argues that this “doesn’t build scientific capacity in the country” because it allows local researchers to publish their work. According to Armenteras, experts from the global north have urged her to send promising Colombian students to be taught by them. This mindset of exploiting resources without contributing to local capacity extends to individuals.

Research and development in developing countries may suffer as a result of the “brain drain” of potential researchers who leave their country to pursue better opportunities elsewhere. This, in turn, will have an impact on paper publishing.

Academics face a number of hurdles before their research can be published, even after they have completed their work. Even for scholars from well-known institutions in the global north, the process of preparing and submitting papers for publication might take years.

After deciding on a journal, academics must first submit a first manuscript to that publication. When a manuscript is submitted to a journal, it can either be rejected by the editors (known as a “desk rejection”) or sent out to be “peer-reviewed.”

The reviewers are requested to suggest revisions to the work, ranging from simple grammatical corrections to orders to completely rewrite the paper. Editing in this manner is common before a work is finally published. As a result, while submitting to a publication, not only the quality of the study but also the quality of the writing is critical.