Academic publishing prides itself on promoting equal opportunities for all. Yet there remain troubling structural differences between the Global North and South in academic publishing. The wealthier countries of the Global North consistently have more access to resources and opportunities compared with the less developed countries of the Global South. And this imbalance leads to issues of inequity for certain researchers and institutions. However, preprints, a type of publication that leverages the visibility and impact of research, may be able to help in the struggle to achieve a truly global publishing ecosystem.
Preprints allow researchers to publish their research quickly through open access and establish research priority in their respective field. For researchers in the Global South, where structural inequalities further slow the progress of publishing, the expediency and visibility of preprints may not just be a benefit, but a necessity.
Academic inequity between the Global North and South
Historically, the global North–South divide has referred to the socio-economic disparities between the world’s leading, developed countries (UK, USA, Germany, France, etc) and the developing or least-developed countries (India, Nigeria, South Africa, Indonesia, Egypt, etc). The divide consists of inequity in areas such as technology, funding, and education. With resources spread so unequally between the Global North and Global South, the divide affects many sectors of society. Including academic publishing.
Recurring challenges characterize academic inequity between the Global North and South. These challenges include funding dependence on external sources, insufficient national spending on research, lack of agency in implementation of research projects, and publishing pressures driven by the output of the Global North.
These disparities become especially clear when we look at data on academic representation. A survey reveals that scholars from the Global South remain significantly underrepresented across several key indicators of academic participation.
- Conference presentations: Only 9% of presenters come from Southern universities, while 57% are affiliated with institutions in the Global North.
- Journal publications: Scholars from the Global South contribute just 16% of published articles, compared with 73% from the Global North. Manuscripts submitted by Southern scholars also face substantially higher desk-rejection rates—up to 34% more than those from Northern authors.
- Citations: Papers authored by Southern scholars receive far fewer citations than those from Northern institutions or North–South collaborations. In some cases, Southern researchers submitting to high-impact journals deliberately avoid citing work from their own region, fearing that geographic bias from reviewers may lead to negative evaluations.
Much has been done to try and close the divide between the Global North and South in academic publishing. Notable efforts revolve around open access journals offering article processing charge (APC) waivers and discounts to researchers from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and global programs such as Research4Life giving such researchers free access to thousands of scholarly articles.
Despite these efforts, significant progress still needs to be made.
How Global South scholars are missing out
The systemic biases evident in the academic publishing model consistently hold back scholars in the Global South, limiting their access to new research, restricting their ability to publish on major platforms, reducing their visibility and citation impact, and placing them in unequal roles within international collaborations.
There has been widespread coverage on the under-representation of Global South scholars. Poor university funding, overworked teachers, and a lack of incentives or rewards lead to to this under-representation, particularly in places like Africa.
However, the lack of support for Global South scholars goes beyond institutional limitations. Even when Global South scholars publish in journals from the Global North, there are often discrepancies between expected visibility and impact and actual citations received. This highlights an underlying bias for literature from Global North-based scholars, and this bias further limits the academic influence of already marginalised voices.
How preprints promote global equity in academia
Preprints are early versions of research papers. They are posted on free-to-access online servers before submission to a journal and before undergoing peer review.
The emergence of preprints, and particularly the preprint explosion during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to the demand for fast and effective research, has helped engender a publishing environment that provides more explicit opportunities in terms of visibility and impact for scholars. And this is true for scholars in the Global South too.
Preprints give Global South scholars the chance to overcome the inherent biases embedded in the global academic publishing model. In a recent study on attitudes towards publishing preprints in the Global North and South, participants consistently highlighted increased visibility and speed of dissemination as primary motivations for choosing to publish a preprint. They also highlighted social media promotion and direct feedback on their research as key influencing factors.
Taking into consideration these advantages, it’s easy to see the appeal of preprints to researchers who have previously felt constrained by institutional and systemic imbalances. Preprints act as a leverage for under-represented voices in the Global South. Ultimately, they help to level the playing field when it comes to academic representation and recognition.
Publishing your research with Preprints.org
As a researcher, you shouldn’t be held back by geographical or institutional biases. Publishing your research as a preprint can help you overcome obstacles stopping you from truly establishing yourself as a researcher.
At Preprints.org, we empower researchers to freely and instantly share their work with a global audience, helping you gain early feedback, boost visibility, and accelerate discovery. Join over 350,000 researchers advancing open science on our accessible, multidisciplinary platform. Ready to submit? Upload your preprint today and make your work quickly discoverable.
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