African Authorship On African Papers During The Covid-19 Pandemic

### Summary box\n\nWith no known cure or vaccine, sharing of information and experiences in real-time became imperative to improving the standard of medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cases rapidly surged worldwide, and so too did medical publications.1 The international media and scientific community reported grave concerns about the capacity of fragile, overburdened healthcare systems as cases began to rise in low-resource settings (LRS), such as those in Africa.2 3 African voices and research are needed to guide the local pandemic response. But, historically, African authors have been underrepresented in medical literature related to the burden of disease on their continent4–6; it may well be the case that the same has happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.7 We aimed to investigate the representation of African authors publishing research and commenting on COVID-19 in Africa.\n\nA systematic search was conducted using MeSH (medical search heading) terms and other keywords to …