Who defines the question in neglected tropical disease research?
4 affiliations
- 1Instituto Nacional de Saúde (INS/MISAU), Maputo, Mozambique.
- 2National Reference Service for Schistosomiasis, Laboratory of Helminthology and Medical Malacology, Fiocruz Minas, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
- 3LAPSA, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ/IOC), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
- 4IHPE, Univ Perpignan Via Domitia, CNRS, IFREMER, Univ Montpellier, Perpignan, France.
Abstract
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are often framed through pathogens, interventions, and elimination targets, but the systems that produce knowledge about them receive less scrutiny. This Viewpoint argues that unequal control of funding, authorship, and publication shapes NTD research questions and can weaken their public-health relevance. Co-design should begin before protocols are fixed and should be supported by proximity to endemic settings, their institutions, and their lived realities. We propose that education, reciprocal mobility, co-supervised training, and durable partnerships among low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and high-income countries (HICs) be recognised as research infrastructure, and that funders enable researchers in endemic countries to lead such partnerships directly. NTD research should be judged not only by scientific outputs, but also by who defined the question and what relationships made that question possible.
Related
- The Ill-Posed Question of Global Mean Temperature
- Using machine learning effectively in marine benthic ecology: a question-driven toolkit
- Revisiting the felsőbányaite-basaluminite question : nomenclatural synonymy and unresolved structural issues
- Skillful Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Prediction with AI Weather--Climate Models Forced by Dynamically Predicted SSTs
- Tibetan Plateau uplift increased western North Pacific tropical cyclone frequency
BibTeX
@article{francisco2026defines,
title = {{Who defines the question in neglected tropical disease research?}},
author = {Augusto Magubeia Francisco and Mariana Gomes Lima and Sónia Maria Enosse and Clélia Christinha Mello Silva and Ronaldo de Carvalho Augusto},
journal = {PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pntd.0014836},
url = {https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0014836},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Who defines the question in neglected tropical disease research?
AU - Augusto Magubeia Francisco
AU - Mariana Gomes Lima
AU - Sónia Maria Enosse
AU - Clélia Christinha Mello Silva
AU - Ronaldo de Carvalho Augusto
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
JO - PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
DO - 10.1371/journal.pntd.0014836
UR - https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0014836
AB - Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are often framed through pathogens, interventions, and elimination targets, but the systems that produce knowledge about them receive less scrutiny. This Viewpoint argues that unequal control of funding, authorship, and publication shapes NTD research questions and can weaken their public-health relevance. Co-design should begin before protocols are fixed and should be supported by proximity to endemic settings, their institutions, and their lived realities. We propose that education, reciprocal mobility, co-supervised training, and durable partnerships among low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and high-income countries (HICs) be recognised as research infrastructure, and that funders enable researchers in endemic countries to lead such partnerships directly. NTD research should be judged not only by scientific outputs, but also by who defined the question and what relationships made that question possible.
SN - 1935-2735
SN - 1935-2727
ER -