Abstract 4186: Underrepresentation of low- and middle-income country affiliated authors in NCI-supported cancer research

Abstract

Abstract Introduction: We conducted a bibliometric analysis to assess authorship of recent publications involving collaborations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Methods: We identified active NCI grants awarded directly to LMIC institutions or to US institutions with a collaborator site or sites exclusively in LMICs between 2015-2019 in NIH Query View Report (QVR). Grants were linked to resulting publications using Dimensions for NIH. Because grants may have been active in 2015 while beginning in earlier years, we analyzed any linked publications from 2011 to 2020. Publications with missing author information were excluded. Author institutional affiliation was used to classify author country income level as defined by the World Bank. Authors with multiple institutional affiliations from a high-income country (HIC) and LMIC were classified as such. Relative citation ratio (RCR) and Altmetric data from Dimensions were used to compare citation impact measures using the Wilcoxon rank sum test. Results: NCI funded 159 grants to US institutions exclusively with LMIC collaborators and five awards directly to institutions in LMICs from 2015 to 2019, resulting in 2,428 publications between 2011 and 2020, of which 49% had at least one author affiliated with an LMIC institution. Of all publications, 78% and 83% had a first and last author with high-income country (HIC) affiliation, respectively. Publications with HIC-affiliated last authors had significantly higher median RCR and Altmetric attention scores than publications with LMIC-affiliated last authors (p=0.0134 and p=0.0004, respectively). Publications with HIC-affiliated first authors had significantly higher Altmetric scores than publications with LMIC-affiliated first authors (p=0.001). Conclusion: LMIC-affiliated authors are represented on only approximately half of publications resulting from NCI grants awarded directly to LMIC institutions or to US institutions with LMIC collaborators, and rarely in the first or last author position. LMIC-affiliated authors also receive less bibliometric attention when represented. Increased scientific capacity and more equitable collaboration should be critical priorities for the cancer research community working in LMICs moving forward. Citation Format: Linsey Eldridge, Elise Garton, Kalina Duncan, Satish Gopal. Underrepresentation of low- and middle-income country affiliated authors in NCI-supported cancer research. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 4186.