Despite promising developments, African researchers are still disadvantaged in publication

"A recent research paper published in PLOS Global Public Health5 sought to determine the authorship trends in infectious disease publications in low-income countries from 1998 to 2018. While the numbers of lead or last authors affiliated with these countries increased over this time span, the proportions of these authors decreased. This trend indicates the persistence of “helicopter research” or “neo-colonial science.” Helicopter research, as the name suggests, is the tendency for researchers from the Global North to “helicopter” into less wealthy parts of the world, receive information from local collaborators, and then depart with no further consideration of the contributions6. Such research siphons away scientific prestige from collaborators and keeps inequality entrenched by preventing more resources being allocated to places where this research is taking place.... Digitization and the shift to transformative and open models of publication should also mean great improvements in publication prospects for academics worldwide, but many researchers in the world’s less economically developed countries still find themselves shut out of this avenue for publication. Open access publication remains costly, sometimes exceeding $10,000 USD per publication7. Despite these challenges, researchers in Africa are in fact proportionally bearing a greater burden of bringing open access research to publication while not receiving credit for this leading role8...."