Solutions to Neglected Tropical Diseases Require Vibrant Local Scientific Communities 英文参考文献.docVIP

Editorial SolutionstoNeglectedTropicalDiseasesRequireVibrant LocalScientificCommunities SerapAksoy* YaleSchoolofPublicHealth,EpidemiologyandPublicHealth,NewHaven,Connecticut,UnitedStatesofAmerica To advance worldwide health, it is necessarytobuildandstrengthenscientific andresearchcapacity.Inturn,forscience Successful implementation of health inter- ventions requires not only highly trained professionals with great skills and expertise, but also close communication between the researchcommunityandhealthcareprofes- sionals, health care organizations, consum- ers,andpolicy-makers. Suchessential com- and they work closely with our deputy editors and journal management staff on all aspects of the review process and decision outcome. In fact, 37% of our associate editors are scientists and/or scholarsfromdisease-endemiccountries. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases recently analyzedthepaperspublishedinthejournal throughDecember2009.Inparticular,we compared the statistics on the number of contributingauthorsversus thenumberof correspondingauthorsassociatedwiththese papersbasedontheircontinentaldistribu- tion. Although corresponding authors are essential for generating the data, the contributingauthorisoftentheleadscientist fortheprojectdevelopment,management, and manuscript writing processes. Our data, summarized in Figure 1, show that amongcorrespondingauthorsofthepapers we have published to date, about 80% resideinanindustrializednationinNorth America,Europe,orAustralia.Only5%of the corresponding authors are from an Africaninstitution,withthemajoritybeing fromSouthAfrica. to become maximally influential and globally productive, vibrant local science communities are essential, particularly in developing countries. Local communities worldwide are especially necessary for munication includes dissemination of effective control of neglected tropical information,particularlyofresearchfindings relevanttolocalproblemsandsolutions. For maximal dissemination and global