BMJ  2005;331:843-844 (8 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7520.843-b

Letter

Capacity building in collaborative research is essential

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Scientists from developing countries are seriously under-represented in various areas of health research.^{1 2} Capacity building in developing countries is essential to improve health research and reduce health inequity.^{3 4} We report a retrospective analysis of original articles that appeared in the BMJ, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health between October 2003 and September 2004.

We noted information on the number of contributing authors and their country affiliation by income.⁵ We also classified the scientific contributions of authors from middle income and low income countries as being "major and intellectual" (contributing to two out of three: study conception or design, analysis, and intellectual contribution to manuscript drafting) or "operational" (contributing to data collection, routine supervision, etc).

The three journals reviewed 659 articles. The median number of authors per article was five (range 1-29). Single author publications were rare (3.2%). The . . . [Full text of this article]

prem_mony@iphcr.res.in
St John's National Academy of Health Sciences, Institute of Population Health and Clinical Research, Bangalore-560034, India

St John's National Academy of Health Sciences, Institute of Population Health and Clinical Research, Bangalore-560034, India

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