A news story published in SciDev illuminates some problems faced by the top world development journals. While journals such as World Development, The Journal of Development Studies and Third World Quarterly are focused on publishing research on developing countries, the editorial boards of these journals contain few researchers from developing countries - and a low percentage of women.

Research authors from developing countries were also under-represented in these journals.

“The problem is that, without representation in the research community, developing countries become the object of research and not participants in it,” study leader Sarah Cummings told SciDev.Net.

Cummings suggested that a possible reason for the lack of minority representation in influential academic research could be the high cost of publishing in prestigious journals. 

Source: SciDev

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