Disparities in research capacity for tobacco control: an inventory of peer-reviewed publications using the Global Tobacco Surveillance System data

Peer-reviewed publications using tobacco surveillance data represent a critical step toward evidence-based tobacco control, but research and publication capacity in countries with fewer resources may be limited. This paper describes patterns in use of the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) and/or Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) data for publications, investigates the origin of the data versus the origin of lead authorship, and describes geographic patterns of publications by country, region, and country income. A bibliometric inventory using six search engines was conducted for relevant studies using data from either of these surveys between January 1999 and January 2021. Descriptive statistics, including frequencies and percentages,were used to analyze publication characteristics. Our search strategy retrieved 1,834 initial records; 493 publications were ultimately included: 249 (50.5%) used adult surveillance data (GATS) and 248 (50.3%) used youth surveillance data (GYTS). Most publications were in English (97.2%, n=479). Data published 50 or more times represented 12 low- and middle-income countries (LMIC): India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mexico, Egypt, Thailand, Poland, Philippines, China, Russian Federation, Turkey and Ukraine. While many of the papers analyzed data from low- and middle-income countries, the number of publications by origin of lead author was the highest for the United States (n=135) and India (n=84). Over 80% of the worlds 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) and we found underrepresentation of these countries as lead authors. These findings can be used to identify opportunities to enhance capacity for analysis, research and dissemination of global tobacco control data in LMIC.