Global Health Action: surviving infancy and taking first steps

Locating GHA to address the digital divide in global health research GHA was launched at the end of May 2008 as a collaborative effort between Umeå Centre for Global Health Research at Umeå University and Co-Action Publishing. The journal was established to ‘contribute to fuelling a more concrete, hands-on approach to global health challenge’, and to address the global health agenda, with a strong focus on policy and implementation (1). GHA welcomes papers on strengthening health information, understanding health determinants in cross-cultural settings, documenting effective health interventions in local settings, and contributing to a better understanding of the performance of health systems in different settings. GHA calls for a strong emphasis on action, previously not addressed strongly by journals in the field of global health (1, 2). During its first five years (May 2008 June 2013), GHA has published 336 articles (which include 87 original articles published as independent papers, 153 original articles in special issues, 21 editorials, 16 PhD reviews, and 59 articles of other types). Contributions are from 1,423 authors (of which, 919 are unique authors) from about 220 cities in 58 countries in the world. The number of papers published in GHA increased from 19 papers during the first year (May 2008 June 2009) to 136 papers in the fifth year (July 2012 June 2013). Figure 1 shows the number of different types of papers published in GHA during May 2008 June 2013. The articles published in GHA represent broad areas of global health research ranging from mortality, climate change, demography and health systems operation and financing to disease and risk factor surveillance, with the vast majority of research being conducted in Africa, Asia, and in rural settings, where high-quality research evidence has been generally lacking. Figure 2 shows a ‘word cloud’ based on the titles of all articles published in GHA during the first five years. Addressing key niches and taking innovative action During the first five years, we focused on three niches which differentiate us from the other journals in the same field: mentorship to young researchers from lowand middle-income countries (LMICs); PhD review papers which help young researchers to kick start and sustain their research careers; and study design and capacity building articles to document details of research design and capacity building activities in LMICs.