Image: Craig Nicholson for Research Professional News
Inorms 2023: Research partnerships entrench dependencies for lower-income countries, keynote speaker says
Global health is being undermined by a “vicious cycle” in which discrepancies of power in research self-reinforce and then entrench health inequalities, according to a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the International Network of Research Management Societies.
Research outputs affect health, and so for global health equalities it matters what research is conducted, Catherine Kyobutungi (pictured giving her talk remotely), who is executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, explained at the Inorms conference in Durban, South Africa, on 31 May.
But funding for research is more readily available to wealthier countries in the global north than to lower-income countries in the global south, she said, and this situation is reinforced by who is rewarded by research partnerships.
Decisions on what research gets funded are usually determined by factors such as researchers’ publication history, she pointed out. And when the global north partners with the global south, the latter is often merely tasked with collecting data, rather than setting objectives and carrying out analysis. This leads to researchers in the global south rarely getting senior authorship credits on resulting papers.
Unequal partnerships
These “unequal partnerships” lead to research “dependency” for the global south, Kyobutungi said, and because they are self-reinforcing the situation worsens over time, causing health outcomes in the global south and global north to diverge.
Creating more equal research partnerships is a way to remedy this situation, she suggested. All participants in the research process—from researchers and research managers to funders, governments and academic journals—have “a role to play”.
Rather than chasing citations, she said, researchers should instead focus on the impacts of their work on societies. Research partnerships must consider the strengths of all partners from the outset, and use those considerations to determine how funding is allocated within the partnership, so that responsibilities and credit are shared in a more equitable way.
“Partnerships must leverage the strength of everybody,” Kyobutungi stressed. She set out her views in detail in an article for Research Professional News.
Research Professional News is media partner for the Inorms 2023 conference in Durban. Read all of the coverage here.