Abstract
BackgroundResearchers from the developing world contribute only a limited proportion to the total research output published in leading medical education journals. Some of them believe that there is a substantial editorial bias against their work. To obtain an objective basis for further discussion the present study was designed to assess the composition of the editorial boards of leading medical education journals.MethodsThe editorial boards of the three leading medical education journals according to their impact factor were retrieved from the respective January issue of the year 2003. We evaluated in which countries the editorial board members were based and classified these countries using the World Bank income criteria.ResultsIndividuals from a number of countries can be found on the editorial boards of the investigated journals, but most of them are based in high-income countries.ConclusionThe percentage of editorial board members which are based in developing world countries is higher for the leading medical education journals than in most of their psychiatry and general medicine counterparts. But it is still too low.
Highlights
A recently published article showed that researchers from the developing world contribute only a limited proportion to the total research output published in leading medical education journals [1]
15 39 24 78 and critical care journals [7]. They reported that researchers from the United States and the UK together accounted for 62% of the editorial board members in anaesthesiology journals and for 80% in critical care journals
In contrast to our findings that the UK is with a small margin the leading country and that the United States dominates only the editorial board of Academic Medicine, they reported the USA as the leading nation in both categories with 52% of all editorial board members in anaesthesiology journals and 72% in critical care journals being based in this country [7]
Summary
Researchers from the developing world contribute only a limited proportion to the total research output published in leading medical education journals. To obtain an objective basis for further discussion the present study was designed to assess the composition of the editorial boards of leading medical education journals. A recently published article showed that researchers from the developing world contribute only a limited proportion to the total research output published in leading medical education journals [1]. According to a recent survey researchers from less-developed countries believe that another reason is a substantial editorial bias against their work [3]. As a first step towards examining the objective basis for this claim researchers from the WHO examined the composition of the editorial boards of leading psychiatry journals and found an under-representation of individuals from low-income and middleincome countries [2]. As a second step the present study was designed to assess the composition of the editorial boards of leading medical education journals
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