Global Oncology Authorship and Readership Patterns

Abstract

PURPOSE Global Oncology is the movement to improve equitable access to cancer control and care, recognizing challenges because of economic and social factors between high-, middle-, and low-income countries (HIC, MIC, and LIC, respectively). The JCO Global Oncology ( JCO GO) is a major platform dedicated to publishing peer-reviewed research relevant to populations with limited resources. To assess the success of its goals of encouraging global interaction and increasing MIC and LIC engagement, we analyzed authorship and readership patterns. METHODS Metadata of logged views between January 1, 2018, and June 30, 2019, of articles published in 2018 by JCO GO were identified using Google Analytics. The country of origin of each author and those who accessed the journal were categorized according to the 2019 income group World Bank Classification (WBC). RESULTS One hundred thirty-two articles were published in JCO GO in 2018. Corresponding authors came from 34 nations: 35% HIC, 47% MIC, and 18% LIC. The top publishing countries were the United States, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Nigeria. Article authors were solely from within one WBC group in 41% (23% HIC, 16% MIC, and 2% LIC). In those with mixed-WBC authorship origins, collaborations were 42% HIC + MIC, 11% HIC + LIC, and 6% HIC + MIC + LIC, but none with MIC + LIC. Regarding viewing, 87,860 views originated from 180 countries (82% of the WBC list): 35% HIC, 51% MIC, and 14% LIC. The most common accessing nations were the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Ethiopia. CONCLUSION More than half of JCO GO's authorship comes from mixed WBC groups, with viewership extending to most of the world's nations. Areas to address are low level of LIC corresponding authors, few papers from authors across all WBC groups, no publications from MIC + LIC collaborations, and a low percentage of readership by LIC. These data provide focus to target interventions aimed at reducing the academic segregation of LIC and improving interactions across all WBC countries.

Announcing the new Editor-in-Chief of ecancermedicalscience

“…Both the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) have made concerted efforts to increase the participation of members from LMICs, by reducing or waiving membership fees, by providing online access to meetings, and by creating guidelines and programmes aimed at resource-limited settings [3,4]. ASCO has further invested in global oncology by creating and growing the Journal of Global Oncology, and by convening task forces and working groups to plan and design educational initiatives and curricula for training in global cancer control [4,5]. Despite these advances, as we move forward, we need to be cautious about the meaning of global oncology, and about its role in the cancer world.…”

Allocation of authorship and patient enrollment among global clinical trials in oncology

“…8 Despite the growing interest in global participation of oncology RCTs, to date, there are only a handful of reports on the allocation of authorship in LMIC/UMIC-and these are restricted to analyses of Sub-Saharan Africa. [9][10][11] To bridge this knowledge gap, we undertook the following study to understand (1) the allocation of authorship to investigators in LMIC/UMIC across all oncology RCTs conducted globally, and (2) the extent to which authorship was proportional to trial enrollment.…”