CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 292Decolonial Thought and EpistemologiesGlobal Health and SurgeryQualitative Research Methods and Ethics

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 27 of the 28 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Ten simple rules for Global North researchers to stop perpetuating helicopter research in the Global South

Open access
Haelewaters, Danny, Hofmann, Tina A., Romero-Olivares, Adriana L.·2021·PLoS Computational Biology
DOI 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009277PMC PMC8376010
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

ntroductionThe practice of Global North (i.e., "richer" globalized countries located in the northern hemisphere, except for Australia and New Zealand) researchers making roundtrips to the Global South (i.e., "poorer" developing countries located around the tropics and in the Southern hemisphere) to collect materials and then process, analyze, and publish results with little to no involvement from local collaborators is referred to as "helicopter research" or "parachute research" [1].At best, local scientists provide logistical help and knowledge of the local community, such as field site guiding, identification of local organisms, translation from and to local languages, and facilitating resources to foreign scientists.However, often, these necessary actors in the scientific process receive little to no retribution for their work and knowledge.For example, a systematic problem in academia is that local scientists and graduate and undergraduate students are often not offered coauthorship in manuscripts for which their contributions were essential (e.g., project planning, logistics, and knowledge of local biodiversity).Even worse is that research remains unavailable for them and others who contributed substantially, since in most cases, peer-review publications are available behind a paywall (but see [2]), and they are written in English, which is the second or third language for many Global South researchers [3].Furthermore, local communities where Global North scientists come to conduct helicopter research are usually left out of broader impacts and outreach efforts, as these tend to happen in Global North communities.Helicopter research is a way to perpetuate colonization practices [4], and power imbalances are critical in perpetuating helicopter research.For example, Global North researchers often set the research agenda based on priorities of their funding agencies, which, in many cases, are decided upon by those same researchers sitting in decision-making committees of those very agencies.All too often, proposals are developed without a deep understanding of problems and priorities of Global South countries where the anticipated research will take place.Global South collaborators are rarely invited to brainstorm and set the research agenda for their needs.This opens the door for unequal partnership with research objectives that may be irrelevant for Global South collaborators, who then, are forced to accept an already funded proposal due to lack of research funding within their own countries or institutions [5].Thus, power and politics behind science are interconnected and are a driving force behind helicopter research.Helicopter research is a problem that also happens within Global North and within Global South countries, where dominating cultures perpetuate abuse on historically marginalized communities, including those of indigenous people, people of color, people from lower

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009277

Cites

27 of 27 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Show all 28 references

1 of the 28 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. SX Ou, 2019, Decolonizing ecology for socially just science, Science Connected Magazine [Internet]
  2. M Amaya, 2004, Bridging the Cultural Divide in Health Care Settings: The Essential Role of Cultural Broker Programs, National Center for Cultural Competence
  3. A de Vos, 2020, The problem of “Colonial Science, Scientific American [Internet]
  4. M Gatta, 2020, Scientists are producing data without sharing it with people who actually need it, Massive Science [Internet].

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 201–292 of 292

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Haelewaters, D., Hofmann, T. A., & Romero-Olivares, A. L.
Affiliations
Universidad Autónoma de Chiriquí (PA)
ORCID
Venue
PLoS Computational Biology
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2021-08-19
Volume
17
Issue
8
Pages
e1009277
ISSN
  • 1553-734X (ISSN-L)
  • 1553-7358
DOI
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009277
PMC
PMC8376010
OpenAlex
W3193474197
Semantic Scholar
39fe8db1b6a4b4926c4c3ea2082f388e45f683b8
Cited by
292
References
28
Citations by year
2026: 48 · 2025: 72 · 2024: 62 · 2023: 59 · 2022: 47 · 2021: 4
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS Computational Biology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
  • University of Minnesota
  • University of Otago
  • Wageningen University and Research
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Global Health and Surgery
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
Keywords
helicopter research, Global South, research ethics, co-authorship, research collaboration, research funding, paywalls, language barriers, indigenous peoples, marginalized communities
MeSH terms
Aircraft, Humans, Research Personnel, Internationality

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review