Editorial Extending the breadth of African laboratory medicine

The African Journal of Laboratory Medicine’s (AJLM) eighth volume contains almost 30 articles, our largest issue yet. A few areas of laboratory medicine are not represented, but the impressively expansive scope of the volume extends from bacteriology (including mycobacteriology), clinical chemistry, clinical pharmacology, haematology, histopathology and virology to informatics, laboratory development and quality management. While appreciating that growth has come with good subject area representation, we have to be just as intentionally concerned with the diversity of matters other than content. If nothing is done, some estimates suggest that it will be over 200 years before gender parity is reached throughout society1 and other forms of imbalance may be even more entrenched. AJLM is therefore not alone in its current introspection and quest for diversity. In a bid to accelerate the quality improvements that will come with inclusiveness, a number of editors, journals and independent researchers have published their recent observations and reflections on the gender and geographic balance of editors, reviewers and authors.2,3,4 Almost universally, they find that representation in scientific journals is slanted towards the male northern bias that permeates most of science, even if the tilt angles differ....