Journal A received a submission which focused on a systematic review/meta-analysis of a health problem in a specific country. It was written by four authors who do not live in that country. In addition, none of the authors seem to have any professional affiliation with any institution or researchers in that country. The systematic review/meta-analysis was based on published references and did not include primary data collection and analyses.
Questions for COPE Council
- Are there ethical issues that the journal should be aware of?
- Could the non-inclusion of authors from the country under study be a firm ground for rejection?
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a paper based on published data/material. The authors' country of origin should not be a factor, rather the editor has to judge the paper on its own merits and the soundness of the analysis. The nationality, ethnicity, race or gender of the authors should be irrelevant to the merits of the paper. There are a lot of instances of systematic reviews of health issues in countries done by research epidemiologists in other countries. If this circumstance were to be considered a serious objection to publication, then almost all of the publications in anthropology and most in sociology would have to be jettisoned. Belonging to a group is not a necessary condition for writing about that group. The only real issue is the quality of work in evidence in the manuscript.
If the editor has concerns, they could check the authorship/conflict of interest declarations and check for possible bias in the text or analyses. The authors’ reasons for doing the study could also be examined. It might also be worth checking the research track records or stated jobs and institutions of the authors. However, as the paper is not a primary research paper (ie, the authors are not gathering the data in country) there is no issue here. A suggestion would be for the editor to ask several native reviewers to check the relevance to the country. If the paper is accepted, the journal could commission a commentary by a native person.