Editor’s Note: Today’s post is by Scholarly Kitchen Chef Haseeb Irfanullah, Sharif Ahmed Mukul, Samiya A. Selim, and Abdullah Shams Bin Tariq. Sharif is a Professor in the Department of Environment and Development Studies at United International University, Bangladesh, and currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Small-scale Forestry. Samiya is a Sustainability Scientist with over 20 years of scientific leadership in environmental conservation, climate change, and sustainable development, integrating social and natural sciences to address coastal social-ecological systems. Abdullah teaches Physics at the University of Rajshahi, and works voluntarily for various research capacity-building initiatives of the country.

The gap between the Global North and the Global South in academic publishing has long been in equity-inclusion dialogues. Sustainable Development Goals-related (SDG) studies and sustainability conversations within the publishing industry also highlight this divide. This article captures our personal experiences and thoughts after spending more than two decades in scholarly publishing. We all are Bangladeshi academics who publish frequently; but here we touch upon four different aspects of academic publishing by linking them with the SDGs: accessing research; equity in co-authorship; editorial leadership; and SDG framing.

Abdullah Shams Bin Tariq:  Bridging the Knowledge Divide

It is not easy to describe the isolation of living on the other side of the knowledge divide. For researchers in Bangladesh, schemes like the Programme for Enhancement of Research Information (PERI) of the International Network for Advancing Science and Policy (INASP), and AGORA, HINARI, OARE, ARDI and GOALI from the Research4Life (R4L)have truly been lifelines.

Where R4L, has provided free access in the key areas of agriculture, health, environment, innovation and law, PERI has led to the formation of the Bangladesh INASP-PERI Consortium (BIPC), now the Library Consortium of Bangladesh (LiCoB), through which we have been able to obtain heavily discounted access.

The deep discounts negotiated initially by INASP, now directly by the LiCoB, just about bring the cost of access within our jumping reach. I believe publishers agree to these deep discounts, because some of them are genuinely understanding and compassionate towards resource-constrained countries, whereas others see the discounts as an opportunity to get entry to a market that previously did not exist for them. In reality, most publishers would struggle to scrape together even this low but sustained level of revenue from Bangladesh by selling to individual institutions in the absence of the consortium.

This has truly been a two-decade long labor of love. I still remember fondly the moment I first saw, in May 2006, text on a university computer reading, “Access provided by University of Rajshahi” (my university in Bangladesh). Another moment of satisfaction came one evening in 2013, when I tried to look at how the enhanced access had impacted the scientific output of Bangladesh. The result can be seen below in Figure 1. The numbers have since grown further to 18,613 articles in 2025.

The other side of the coin was improving the visibility of Bangladeshi research located on the other side of the knowledge divide. For many years, journals published in Bangladesh remained hidden from the public eye. Since 2007, the INASP initiative of Bangladesh Journals Online (BanglaJOL) has been a game-changer in this regard. I personally was amazed when, in 2011, I saw Figure 2 below. It showed that, once available, there was global interest in Bangladeshi research output. Research publications once invisible even domestically, started to be accessed and cited around the world.

The increased visibility not only resulted in greater uptake, but also in the journals trying to raise their standards. Many training events in editorial practices, contemporary cross-referencing, DOIs, and so on (several of which were facilitated by one of the coauthors (HI) of this piece) significantly boosted the level of operations of the Bangladeshi journals.

These are but a couple of examples of how we have partnered with global initiatives to bridge the knowledge divide and work towards SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) starting even before these were formulated.

Samiya A. Selim:  Turning Equity Rhetoric into Publishing Practice

My academic trajectory has almost entirely been through Global North institutions — Undergraduate study in the US, a Master’s and PhD in the UK, and a postdoctoral fellowship in Germany. Returning to Bangladesh in 2016 to join the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) as Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, I made a deliberate choice not to let those connections lapse, but to convert them into structures that could channel resources, training, and co-authorship opportunities back into Bangladesh.

Institutionally, this has meant formalizing partnerships through MoUs and joint grant applications — most visibly theULAB-Keele University partnership, which has run joint symposia on energy-resilience research since 2019, and the EU Jean Monnet PPLA project on land administration and gender with Dublin City University. Grants such as these, alongside a Belmont Forum-funded research project with ZMT Leibniz Centre for Tropical Research, Germany, are designed from the outset as equitable partnerships, not extraction arrangements, and Bangladeshi researchers hold genuine intellectual leadership, not just data-collection roles. International collaborations with the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (HIGH) and the V2V Global Partnership have produced joint publications — including work on health and mobility in a changing climate and non-economic loss and damage with HIGH, and on transition pathways in small-scale fisheries and vulnerability to viability (V2V) in Asia and Africa through V2V Global Partnership — marking first-peer reviewed publication milestones for at least eight early-career Bangladeshi researchers.

Personal networking has mattered just as much as institutional architecture. Through IMBIZO, and my role as Chair ofIMECaN and Co-Chair of IMBeR’s Human Dimension Working Group, I’ve pushed deliberately for collaborative journal publication projects that bring early-career researchers from the Global South in as co-authors, not research assistants. This produced papers directly interrogating equity in our own field — on fostering diversity, equity and inclusion in interdisciplinary marine science, on reflecting critically on participatory and transdisciplinary marine research approaches, and on advocating for a triple-blind review system to counter reviewer bias against Global South authorship. These networks have sustained collaboration into higher-profile outputs too, including Towards Ocean Equity in the Blue Compendium.

This work speaks directly to SDGs 4.7 and 4.b — embedding sustainable development education and expanding scholarship access into how research careers are actually built — and to SDGs 17.6 and 17.9, on North-South knowledge-sharing and capacity-building. My contribution operates at a level these macro targets do not always reach: generating the collaborations, tools, and co-authorship pathways that let young Global South researchers publish on equal footing with peers who have had earlier access to funding and training — turning equity rhetoric into publishing practice.

Sharif Ahmed Mukul:  From Author to Editor – Finding My Place in Science

I still remember the excitement of seeing my name in print for the first time. In 2006, while I was still an undergraduate student, I published my first scientific paper. At the time, I could not have imagined that what began as curiosity about research would grow into a lifelong passion — not only for discovering new knowledge, but also for helping shape how that knowledge reaches the world. As I continued publishing in international journals, invitations to review manuscripts soon followed. Reading the work of fellow researchers from around the world was both a privilege and a learning experience, but what fascinated me most was the invisible work of journal editors. Behind every published paper stood editors who balanced scientific rigor with fairness, guided authors through improvement, and quietly safeguarded the integrity of science. I found myself drawn to that role.

Soon after completing my PhD in 2016 from the University of Queensland (Australia), I joined the editorial boards of three international journals: Journal of Applied Ecology, Ecology and Evolution, and Small-scale Forestry. Around the same time, Publons recognized me among the world’s top reviewers in my field in 2017 and 2018. While the recognition was deeply encouraging, what mattered more was the realization that contributing to science did not end with publishing my own work. Supporting the work of others became equally meaningful.

When I returned permanently to Bangladesh in 2020 to begin my academic career, I brought that commitment home with me. Over the following years, I took on editorial roles with several international journals, including Biodiversity and Conservation, Sustainability, Ecosystem Health and Sustainability, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, and Discover Conservation. Alongside journal editing, I also edited four scholarly books, including two published by Springer. Whether writing, reviewing, or editing, my work has consistently been guided by a common purpose: advancing research that contributes to the SDGs, particularly SDGs 13 (Climate Action), 14 (Life Below Water), and 15 (Life on Land), with recent work extending to SDGs 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production).

The most transformative chapter of my journey began in early 2025, when I assumed the role of Editor-in-Chief of Small-scale Forestry. It changed the way I viewed scientific publishing. I came to appreciate that a Chief Editor does far more than make editorial decisions. Every manuscript represents someone’s years of dedication, every decision carries responsibility, and every opportunity to mentor an author or an early-career editor has the potential to strengthen the scientific community.

One aspect of the role that I value most is helping remove barriers to publishing. Researchers from developing countries, non-native English-speaking backgrounds, or institutions with limited resources often have outstanding ideas, but face challenges in communicating them effectively. Whenever possible, I believe editors should not simply judge manuscripts — they should guide authors, encourage improvement, and ensure that promising science is not overlooked because of where it comes from or how it is written.

There are few professional satisfactions greater than watching a journal flourish. Over the past eighteen months, under my leadership, Small-scale Forestry has reached several important milestones: its Clarivate Impact Factor increased from 1.4 to 2.4, it advanced from Q2 to Q1 in the SCImago subject rankings, its Scopus CiteScore rose from 3.1 to 4.2, and the average time to first editorial decision fell from 75 days to just six days — making it one of the fastest journals in the Springer Nature portfolio.

Looking back, I realize that that first paper I published in 2006 opened a door I never expected. Today, nearly 20 years later, I remain just as inspired by the privilege of helping others tell their scientific stories as I was by telling my own!

Haseeb Irfanullah:  Framing Sustainability for Publishing

Exactly seven years ago, I became the first Chef of The Scholarly Kitchen from the Global South. Frankly, I didn’t quite realize what it meant to be part of an international academic publishing association. Soon I started searching for my niche in this highly evolving landscape (we can call it waterscape as well, given the big waves it has been experiencinglately!). Being a voice of the Global South was an obvious, but valuable choice. But I soon realized, I didn’t have a direct exposure to the publishing industry of other developing countries, despite my long association with the South-focused organization INASP.

One of the benefits of not being employed by the publishing industry (I’ve been an independent consultant in environment since 2019), you can simply demand that the publishing world follow your dreams! Over the years, I have come a long way from recognizing that the Global North and South “both need to meet in the middle” to reduce the gap. I went on to dissect the peer-review system and advocate for a 100% AI-based review system, to propose a Voluntary Contribution Transaction model, to underline the contradictions within the industry, to challenge the gaps in the current framing of DEIA. My professional experience of working in climate change and biodiversity conservation helped me to measure scholarly publishing’s ‘resilience’, and explore its different ‘diversities’.

One of my cherished exposures came in the post-COVID time when the SDG Publishers Compact was launched by the UN and the International Publishers Association (IPA). Soon I started tracking how publishers were lining up to support the Compact through my regular articles on The Scholarly Kitchen, with special focus on climate change. I became the co-chair of the Environment and Sustainability (E&S) Committee of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) in 2023. This allowed me to be part of the E&S Committee’s ventures as it unpacked new ideas, like the EASE SDG Checklist. This also helped me to collaborate with many publishing entities on the SDGs and sustainability conversations, the latest was in the 2026 Summer Symposium of the EASE.

Nobody is optimistic about the world achieving the SDGs by 2030. A post-SDG discussion should be a priority now for scholarly publishing, since it came quite late to the SDG party. I strongly believe academic publishing should be shaping the post-SDG agenda, not just following the agenda set by others. Does the publishing industry believe that too?