You are absolutely right Othusitse Ricky Madibela . Many high impact Journals do not focus on local issue.

Perhaps, it is a good idea to contact the editors and ask for sections within the journal that promote positive discrimination.

Great idea. I have seen journals even showing their gender equality; perhaps its only fair to consider sound research of importance to other regions of the world, even if it does not address an issue in UK, USA, German or Sweden.

Yes

Apparently, this is a very common problem with most journals. I have on various occasions while preparing manuscripts for publication, been advised to write the problem statement in a "more global manner", but I find it unfair because sometimes you really just wanna highlight how much of an issue this is in a specific area. In my view, other scientists can always learn from us. Problem is, it's expected that other regions should be at the forefront while others follow!

Leo Nyikadzino Mahachi you absolutely right. Recently I saw a paper on dairy cattle production in USA and it was specifically stating the problem in a State in USA and went on to say how their formulated protocols/methods to tackle that particular problem in that State NOT according to world view. So yes, I agree with you that other regions like Africa we are to follow trends and innovation trending or created in the west.

I agree with you 100%.

It is indeed discriminatory. This kind of practice will unfortunately kill creativity and the freedom to search wide, because we will all thrive to comply for the sake of publication

To say an article's content is local or addresses local issues, intrinsically it is a subtle way of telling the author or the authors that the work belongs to a developing country and solves issues affecting such jurisdictions and may not be of interest to topnotch researchers and stakeholders who patronize such journals. Surprisingly if the lead author is from an advanced country and does collaborative work with authors from a less developed country it is most likely to be accepted without such comments even though it may not have a Western taste. It is a common knowledge that some agencies support research in less developed countries by bringing together researchers from their home countries and underdeveloped countries and papers are published without problems such as the one raised here even though such research works seek to or purported to address local issues or challenges. Sometimes however, some works have been done a century or more ago in the advanced countries and is now being done or repeated in a developing country and one can therefore guess the response from the editors of such high impact journals. We there , also need to understand these dynamics and blame editors for discrimination only when we are sure the work has modern taste and can fly. After all, no editor -in-chief will like to fill his journal with "chaff" as the journals also have a reputation or integrity to maintain.

Chris Tudeka

I appreciated you views, which are good by the way. However, we are not talking "chaff" but quality manuscripts which are rejected merely because they are from a developing country. The irony of it is that you will get a paper that specifically investigate a local problem in UK, even mentioning the local areas (site) and experimental subjects which may have no international bearing, but will be published. In our case it is not the science which is questioned, but the fact that it is would not be applicable to international audience. Who is international audience? If you were to think about it, the so called third world make the highest percentage of the international audience. It is when the tern global or international suit then that it is floated around to bring us on board, but when it does not, it is local that is used. That is grossly unfair.

Thank you Prof. Madibela such is the paradox or the irony of a research work in the third world.