Research from developing countries is not visible to any significant extent.
This is an interesting question. As a researcher living and working in a developing country, i do not think the publication process is tilted against developing country researchers but rather there is a genuine interest among academics worldwide to gain access to research from developing countries. The problem, however, is that since publication must undergo peer review, many researchers from developing countries fall short of certain standards because of several factors ranging from inexperience in study design, data collection and statistics to poor analysis and communication. These in turn result from a systemic lack of the required support enjoyed by their counterparts in developed setting in the areas of epidemiology, statistics and even scientific communication (think about english language, etc). So we tend to have publication bias not as a result of where the researchers are located but who the researchers are and how well established they are in research.
Agree to some extent. Not necessarily we can generalzed it to all journals but its true from some perspectives.
1. Publication process fee which is high enough that some time even exceptionally well manuscript can not be published due to the same constrain. In addition there is a trend that most of the indexed journals are moving towards publication charges..
2. Another important aspect is that some time journals are really biased when they unnecessary reject manuscript with unjustified reasons like, level of written english is not acceptable, the article is of limited scope OR the data is pertaining to some particular practice etc etc though you may find many articles from developed countries with acceptable OR below acceptable level of english similar to the work you are intended to publish.
I'm the senior associate editor for international emergency medicine at Academic Emergency Medicine so have some knowledge here. Publication fees are an issue for the minority of non profit journals that charge but academic publications are in a state of flux and few of the best have fees. The junk for profit journals that will take anything are a different issue.
Inadequate English is an issue - doing a complete revision takes me 40+ hours and even though I do it pro bono only a very good idea is worth that effort.
Projects that are of local interest should go to local journals. Yes that gives an edge to developed world authors but that is because they also represent the readership.
Manuscripts from the developing world clearly have an edge (really) provided the quality is as good as ones from the developed world. But the methodology needs to be solid. That is the major problem. New researchers need mentors who have established expertise. Our journal does occasionally try to supply this but Jr researchers in big academic centers have a big advantage.
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