Table 1 Common themes of internal barriers to health research leadership in and from the GS
| Â | Barriers |
|---|---|
Researcher | Faculty members • Barriers to research productivity including lack of time, overloaded teaching schedule, lack of interest in conducting research, limited skills in research methodology and statistical techniques • Heavy teaching loads and administrative roles limiting the time for research • Not having defined workload allocation for teaching, research, administrative roles • Lack of incentives such as promotion to conduct research Early-career researchers • Limited mentorship opportunities • Poor research skills and capacity; basic research skills but lack of advanced research abilities • Limited research publishing capacity and publication challenges, including language barriers, time constraints, not knowing where to publish, prohibitive publication costs • Lack of incentives and motivation to publish, including lack of recognition through career development awards and low salaries • Limited grant-writing support and capacity, resulting in poor ability to attract international and local research funds Research leaders • Lack of recognition of the role of research in development or importance of operational research to programmatic activity • Weak research leadership skills and competencies |
Institutional | Personnel and institutional infrastructure • Mainly teaching positions in higher education institutions, limited researcher positions • Shortage of faculty members and research leaders • Weak enabling environment: limited research assistants, limited funds for research • Poor research environment, weak health research system governance, infrastructure, policies and lack of institutional support • Corruption in research institutions Research education • Poor education in general, not limited only to research education • Weak research education/training in universities • Poor quality of doctoral research training • Limited funding to doctoral research training Collaboration • Culture of individualism • Limited collaboration between faculties or disciplines in the same university or institution • Weak collaboration between local research institutions • Limited collaboration and partnerships between programme staff and academic institutions, hindering operational research • Weak South–South collaboration intra- and interregionally Knowledge translation • Limited efforts from researchers and insufficient time, skills and institutional mechanisms for knowledge translation |
Systemic/structural | Political will • Lack of political will to support research and poor local research funding Politicization of research • Limited freedom of research • Politicization of research, including research leadership roles • Political sensitivity of some research implications rendering knowledge translation challenging Political instability • Research infrastructures negatively affected by wars and conflicts • Loss of human capital: brain drain, push factors Research systems • Low number of health researchers, limited workforce capacity • Lack of research career pathways and limited funding for degree programme and postdoctoral research posts • Low researcher salaries • Much research undertaken through well-paid consultancies rather than through institutions, with commissioning bodies often unwilling to pay overheads to institutions • Poor recognition of research led by local researchers in GS countries themselves • Limited publication opportunities: few journals from the GS; poor indexing or low impact factors of local journals from the GS • Few and unsustainable research networks in GS or platforms to engage with regional and global research communities. Barriers to such networks include funding, weak and fragmented network management skills • Limited funding for capacity-building initiatives |