Publishing high-quality academic literature in oncology is challenging for authors in the developing world. These early-career cancer researchers face several barriers to publishing in high-quality journals; including lack of funding and research facilities, as well as inadequate training. 

By 2030, it is expected that cancer will be the primary cause of death in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), therefore, publication best practices, scientific integrity, and ethics are required to improve oncology research quality and patient care in these countries.

Dr Khalid El Bairi, Prof Ouissam Al Jarroudi and Prof Said Afqir (Mohammed VI University Hospital, Oujda, Morocco) propose some basic principles and tools in their article published in JCO Global Oncology that may help young oncologists, especially in developing countries overcome these issues and boost their academic careers.

The article suggests that the lack of ethics committee approval is one of the main limitations for cancer research of authors in LMICs. Researchers should always get approval from an ethics committee before conducting a study involving human participants.

Prospective registration of study protocols is also essential to enhance credibility, reproducibility, and transparency for both observational and interventional studies.

In addition, meta-research studies, including systematic reviews with or without meta-analyses, are potential article types that require prior registration on online databases such as the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews, which have a significant positive impact on research results by increasing review quality. 

Cancer research (particularly systematic reviews and observational and interventional clinical trials) influence clinical practice guidelines. Keeping this in mind, authors should provide accurate and complete reporting of their rationale, methodology, results, their significance for practice, and limitations to maximise objectivity and extrapolation for daily management of patients with cancer. 

Enhancing evidence-based medicine and biostatistics (EBM) skills in the training of young oncologists is highly recommended. To reach this goal several strategies can be adopted, particularly, online-based courses and support.  

The authors note that an impressive number of open-access predatory journals and publishers are launched every year. Researchers are warned not to fall prey to such journals.

These can be identified by features such as the absence of peer-review, plagiarism tolerance, misleading US-based addresses, confusing indexing and fake high-impact factors, spam invitations, the nearly 100% acceptability rates, fake and unqualified editors etc.

If someone does fall prey to such a journal, the article lists some ways to repair this issue.

Participating in the open science movement and applying for funding opportunities, fellowships, and grants is also a beneficial step for young authors who want to progress their careers. 

This framework has been developed worldwide by funders, policymakers, and research institutions to enhance access to research findings. Getting involved in working groups, scientific social networking, blogging, volunteering, and simplifying the oncologic sciences for the public and undergraduate students can also be helpful.

It is a recent trend that enables the expansion of working groups to improve patients' care and foster research between oncologists from low-income countries and others from prestigious institutions from the developed world.

Another barrier observed by the authors of this article is that access of early-career oncologists to peer review is challenging as training to develop this expertise is not included in their residency and research programmes.

Moreover, reviewing requires mentorship, specific instructions, experience in publishing, biostatistics, and clinical research methods. Currently, several web-based initiatives and resources were developed to help young investigators and are accessible worldwide for free. 

In the end, Dr Bairi suggests that it is good practice to always keep yourself up-to-date regarding the latest news and research in oncology. He says that "Educational portals for oncologists, such as The ASCO Post, ESMO News/OncologyPRO, ecancer, and ASCO Communications, which provide oncology news allow readers to be up to date with the latest developments that influence daily practice by newsletters and interacts with their authors. An illustrative example of these good free online initiatives is ecancer. This resource presents updated and free-of-charge knowledge on all areas of cancer research to meet global oncology needs. ecancer publishes open research and research news, shares video resources and insights from covered conferences, provides continuing medical education–accredited e-learning in multiple languages, and provides free or low-cost in-person educational training across the globe. This initiative also offers education for patients with cancer through its program ecancerpatient.org intended to simplify oncology news and information in a friendly format."

ecancer also has a journal, ecancermedicalscience, which is fully open access and focuses solely on LMICs and under-resourced communities. In order to help reduce global inequalities in cancer care and treatment, we provide free access to all articles from the point of publication and we only charge authors who have specific funding to cover publication costs.

See the full article here.