Dr Layla McCay: The Ephemeral Fugitives of Global Health Research

"This week I went to the launch of a brand new journal, Global Health: Science and Practice. Funded by USAID, and supported by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, George Washington University and Knowledge for Health, it hits all the buzzwords of the global health and development zeitgeist: open access, diplomacy, scaling up, multidisciplinary, local solutions, experiential knowledge, lessons learned, and of course -- game changer. But will GHSP be a game changer? This journal is interesting because it also wants to be a manual. Not that there's anything too unusual about that -- most journals have extensive methods sections that describe exactly how the experiment was done. A good methods section would ideally enable anyone to replicate it. But GHSP seems to want more than this: it wants very detailed methods that don't just tell its readers how to do an experiment --they tell us how to deliver and scale up a program. This is usually the sort of information that lurks in the far reaches of the back offices and esoteric webpages of NGOs and multilateral agencies, receding into a shady, chaotic world known as 'grey literature', a place where those seeking to implement similar programs may never come across it. And yet, it seems to be true: at the journal launch (a swank affair at Washington's National Press Club, complete with sculptured fruit and some excellent granola for breakfast) Ron Waldman, co-editor of the journal, announced that GHSP specifically aims to bring important learnings out of the grey literature and into the light ..."