PLOS Global Public Health publishes its 1000th paper!

By Editors-in-Chief Catherine Kyobutungi and Madhu Pai, and Executive Editor Julia Robinson

When PLOS Global Public Health was launched in April 2021, we did so with a bold mission: 

We published our first papers in October 2021, and today, 16 months later, we find ourselves celebrating a milestone of sorts – we are publishing our 1000th paper. One thousand papers that have spanned the entire scope of our journal, papers discussing the most urgent health issues of our time. We’ve been honored to publish papers that tackle everything from COVID to gender disparities to improving service delivery to Indigenous health. We’ve welcomed submissions from over 100 countries, published papers with corresponding authors from 77 countries which were handled so expertly by an Editorial Board with members from over 70 countries.

It would be impossible to list all our favorite articles here, but here are a few that the Editors-in-Chief, Catherine Kytobungi and Madhu Pai, and Executive Editor Julia Robinson wanted to highlight.

In his piece ”The great Texas COVID tragedy,” Peter Hotez highlighted how Texas has been a ground zero for the anti vaccine health freedom movement in the United States, and how this has had devastating consequences for Texas and the entire nation.

In global health, major plans and decisions continue to be made far away from where the actual problems and solutions are. In his Opinion “Country ownership in global health,” Abdisalan Mohamed Noor shared ten lessons he has learnt in the last 20 years on how to think about country ownership.

Sara Dada and colleagues explored the diversity – or lack thereof – of editorial boards in their piece Challenging the “old boys club” in academia: Gender and geographic representation in editorial boards of journals publishing in environmental sciences and public health

A giant share of global health funding goes to institutions and partners in high income countries, even when the biggest needs and best experts are in low and middle-income countries. Esmita Charani and colleagues called on funders to address this power imbalance in their piece “Funders: The missing link in equitable global health research?”.

In their powerful piece, Anpotowin Jensen and Victor A. Lopez-Carmen, two Indigenous American youth, asked why the decolonizing global health movement ignores Indigenous Peoples, especially in settler colonial nations such as the USA.

Rebekka Lynch, Martín Lajous, Unnur Valdimarsdottir and colleagues present this fascinating study on perceived stress and hair cortisol concentration (HCC), suggesting that HCC could be a viable biomarker in studies of chronic psychological stress.

Is it possible to tackle anti-microbial resistance without addressing the abuse of antibiotics in animals? Ranya Mulchandani and colleagues published a sobering study which estimated the global usage of veterinary antimicrobials in 2020 at 99,502 tonnes!

In a recent Opinion, Catherine Kyobutungi and colleagues discussed what anti-Blackness in global health means, why it matters, and what needs to be done to counter anti-Blackness in global health and development?

Yap Boum and colleagues wrote about persistent power imbalances, racism, and maintenance of neocolonialism in global health research and offered a checklist for bilateral research partnerships.

1000 papers is a wonderful accomplishment and we invite you to join in celebrating with us. Now on to the next 1000 – and beyond!