Has the Global South become a playground for Western scholars in information and communication technologies for development? Evidence from a three-journal analysis

Abstract

This study analyzes the role of the Global South countries and the representation of scholars from the Global South in three top-level journals in the area of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D). All the peer-reviewed articles published from 2015 to 2017 in the journals were examined for (a) the country and regional affiliations of the authors, (b) the distribution of countries which were studied, (c) the role of Global South scholars played in the studies, and (d) the research methods adopted in the studies. Besides using the conventional bibliometric indicators, this study also explored several important but often-ignored dimensions such as a country-by-country quantification of the severity of underrepresentation of scholars from the Global South in the publications and the relationship between the role of the scholars from the Global South and the research methods used in the published studies. The analysis shows a complicated picture of the status of low- and middle-income countries and scholars from the Global South in the ICT4D scholarship. Although some indicators suggest that scholars from the Global South play an important role, in general, they are underrepresented.