Scholarly Communication in Medicine and the Spread of Predatory Publishing
The move from print publishing to electronic publishing was life-changing in a very literal sense for the world of medicine. With the introduction and spread of electronic publishing, medical doctors and researchers were suddenly able to communicate almost instantly, opening opportunities for collaboration, and ultimately the betterment of humanity. Throughout the latter part of the 20th century, computer-mediated communication played a crucial role reinforcing the efforts to extend human life expectancy (Brittanica). In recent years, medical providers have taken to social media, particularly Twitter as a way to "build an online brand or personality" for themselves, their research, and/or their practices. One study examined the use of Twitter hashtags during medical conferences, and found that study also found that Twitter has the ability to put "inexperienced attendees on the same platform as presenters who are often experts on the topics that they are presenting" opening a whole new realm of knowledge sharing (Surg, 2020). In fact, a study by Alexander Djuricich, M.D. coined the term “evidence-based tweeting" which speaks to physicians using Twitter to "tweet" about their research findings and provide more details and relevant literature in subsequent tweets (Djuricich, 2014).
However, technology and electronic publishing also brought some significant ethical concerns. A growing trend in publishing is open access which “shifts publication costs to authors” which has in turn “opened the door to money as a mediator“ and the possibility for publication without quality peer review or any peer review at all (Forero). This trend has led to the development of predatory publishing and predatory journals. The spread of predatory publishing affects all disciplines, however there are certainly disciplines that stand to suffer worse consequences if these unethical publishing practices aren’t contained. One such discipline is medicine as medical literature “is intimately linked to the health of patients” (Harvey, 2017).
Predatory journals tend to “promise high acceptance rates and fast-track publishing” only taking days or a few weeks to publish papers - a far quicker timeline than a standard peer review process. Typically these journals also don’t have an editorial office, and it shows. Papers in predatory journals are often riddled with grammatical errors and typos. Predatory journals “sow confusion, promote shoddy scholarship and waste resources.” Not only do these journals require authors to pay for the publication of their work, they also fail to conduct checks for quality (Grudniewicz, 2019).
Predatory publishing isn’t going anywhere, but there are measures that might be effective in protecting medical literature. Among the recommended actions are “preventing predatory journals from being indexed by the National Library of Medicine,” encouraging quality or value over quantity in academia, and requiring retractions of publications in predatory journals on curriculum vitae (Harvey, 2017).
References:
Djuricich, A. M. (2014). Social media, evidence-based tweeting, and JCEHP. The Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 34(4), 202–204. https://doi.org/10.1002/chp.21250
Forero, D. A., Oermann, M. H., Manca, A., Deriu, F., Mendieta-Zerón, H., Dadkhah, M., Bhad, R., Deshpande, S. N., Wang, W., & Cifuentes, M. P. (2018). Negative effects of “predatory” journals on global health research. Annals of Global Health, 84(4), 584. https://doi.org/10.29024/aogh.2389
Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., Ardern, C., Balcom, L., Barros, T., Berger, M., Ciro, J. B., Cugusi, L., Donaldson, M. R., Egger, M., Graham, I. D., Hodgkinson, M., Khan, K. M., Mabizela, M., Manca, A., … Lalu, M. M. (2019). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature, 576(7786), 210–212. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03759-y
Harvey, H. B., & Weinstein, D. F. (2017). Predatory publishing: an emerging threat to the medical literature. Academic Medicine, 92(2), 150–151. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000001521
History of medicine - Medicine in the 20th century | Britannica. (n.d.). Retrieved October 18, 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/science/history-of-medicine/Medicine-in-the-20th-century
Santarone, K., Meneses, E., Shepherd, A., Boneva, D., Mckenney, M., & Elkbuli, A. (2020). Surgeons and social media: The use of twitter hashtags at the Academic Surgical Congress 2015-2019: A cross sectional study. Annals of Medicine and Surgery (2012), 58, 151–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2020.09.004