Ecancermedicalscience

Eve Gray

doi:10.3332/ecancer.2013.ed22

Abstract

ecancermedicalscience

Highlights

What is not well known is that the in the Thomson Reuters journal indexes (ISI), a commercially-owned indexing system, owned by one company, has established a hierarchy of knowledge in which research from the global North is ‘mainstream’ or ‘international’ and research from the developing world as of ‘local’ interest only and lacking sufficient impact for inclusion in the system unless it addresses issues that are of specific interest to Northern readers [1]
The impact of this environment is made clear by the editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton, quoted in THES in 2010 as saying that he was constrained from publishing African authors in the Lancet, because this might reduce citations from his main readership, which wants articles on randomized clinical trials in the global North
David Cooper in his study of use-oriented research in South Africa argues for a necessary realignment with current realities: “[A] national position needs to be articulated . . . that in the knowledge society of the third industrial revolution, issues of health, housing, transport, etc., are not independent of university research efforts" [4]. This concurs with the findings of a study of research communication at the University of Cape Town’s Opening Scholarship program [5] that identified a culture of “translational” scholarship, or what Cooper calls “use-inspired basic research,” in a number of research groupings

Summary

Introduction

Insight into the range of other outputs that are being produced was provided when the Carnegie 3 programme on Strategies to Overcome Poverty and Inequality launched with a conference at the University of Cape Town in late 2012 [3]. This concurs with the findings of a study of research communication at the University of Cape Town’s Opening Scholarship program [5] that identified a culture of “translational” scholarship, or what Cooper calls “use-inspired basic research,” in a number of research groupings.

Results

Conclusion