Author misrepresentation of institutional affiliations: protocol for an exploratory case study

Insufficient yet improving involvement of the global south in top sustainability science publications

The creation of global research partnerships is critical to produce shared knowledge for the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Sustainability science promotes the coproduction of inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge, with the expectation that studies will be carried out through groups and truly collaborative networks. As a consequence, sustainability research, in particular that published in high impact journals, should lead the way in terms of ethical partnership in scientific collaboration. Here, we examined this issue through a quantitative analysis of the articles published in Nature Sustainability (300 papers by 2135 authors) and Nature (2994 papers by 46,817 authors) from January 2018 to February 2021. Focusing on these journals allowed us to test whether research published under the banner of sustainability science favoured a more equitable involvement of authors from countries belonging to different income categories, by using the journal Nature as a control. While the findings provide evidence of still insufficient involvement of Low-and-Low-Middle-Income-Countries (LLMICs) in Nature Sustainability publications, they also point to promising improvements in the involvement of such authors. Proportionally, there were 4.6 times more authors from LLMICs in Nature Sustainability than in Nature articles, and 68.8–100% of local Global South studies were conducted with host country scientists (reflecting the discouragement of parachute research practices), with local scientists participating in key research steps. We therefore provide evidence of the promising, yet still insufficient, involvement of low-income countries in top sustainability science publications and discuss ongoing initiatives to improve this.

Authors, peer reviewers, and readers: What is expected from each player in collaborative publishing?

Scholarly publishing is in a crisis, with the many stakeholders complaining about different aspects of the system. Authors want fast publication times, high visibility and publications in high-impact journals. Readers want freely accessible, high-quality articles. Peer reviewers want recognition for the work they perform to ensure the quality of the published articles. However, authors, peer reviewers, and readers are three different roles played by the same group of individuals, the users of the scholarly publishing system—and this system could work based on a collaborative publishing principle where “nobody pays, and nobody gets paid”.

Publishing Without Perishing: A Guide to the Successful Reporting of Clinical Data

Many researchers find writing a scientific manuscript a highly discouraging task. This problem may be partly responsible for the fact that approximately half of completed clinical studies worldwide remain unreported or unpublished. Therefore, we aimed to create a user-friendly guide with helpful recommendations, which are complementary to the many existing reporting guidelines for quantitative clinical data. This article has been prepared with clearly defined subheadings, to facilitate quick identification of any specific sections/topics. We encourage the use of the IMRaD model (ie, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion), providing guidance on the key information required, as well as the dos and don’ts. We also comment briefly on feedback and rejection, proposing the I AM approach (Ignore, Address, and Move on).