TY - JOUR T1 - Beyond pledges: academic journals in high-income countries can do more to decolonise global health JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006200 VL - 6 IS - 5 SP - e006200 AU - Bolajoko O Olusanya AU - Macpherson Mallewa AU - Felix Akpojene Ogbo Y1 - 2021/05/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/6/5/e006200.abstract N2 - SummaryIn the aftermath of the Black Lives Movement, there has been a growing call to decolonise global health towards equity, equality, diversity and inclusiveness (EEDI), especially for black people and other marginalised populations.Global health still manifests its colonial heritage of white supremacy in the conceptualisation of policies and programmes aimed at reducing health inequalities between high-income countries and low-income and middle-income countries.The academic community and other actors have pledged reforms towards improved EEDI principles with particular focus on under-representation by black people and other marginalised populations in global health initiatives.Academic journals should establish internal and collaborative mechanisms to detect and discourage submissions whose authorship and content violate EEDI principles if the relevant editorial pledges to decolonise global health are to be realised.The endemic discrimination in global health has attracted unprecedented attention since the killing of George Floyd and other black people in the USA in 2020. Several academic journals mostly in high-income countries (HICs) have responded by pledging editorial reforms to eradicate racism and other forms of discrimination in research publications.1–3 It is pertinent to mention that the call for equity, equality, diversity and inclusiveness (EEDI) in global health has been long-standing before the renewed antiracism campaign.4–6 In the past, the focus was on the need to ensure equitable research undertakings by institutions from HICs in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). This included efforts to build local research capacity and to ensure researchers from LMICs who are involved in multi-institutional research actively contribute to the resultant manuscripts as authors.6Some journals even pledged not to publish studies that used data, infrastructure, or personnel in an LMIC that do not involve at least one scientist from that country as an author.7 Additionally, some journals have gone further to address the racial imbalance in … ER -