Chapter 10 - Medical journals: judging the quality of the editors, the peer reviewers, plus the issue of plagiarism

Abstract

This chapter presents judging the quality of the editors, the peer reviewers, plus the issue of plagiarism in medical journals. Journals can be and often are extremely influential voices in setting standards of accepting and adjudicating submitted research to accurately and unbiasedly update and inform the profession. We depend upon the editors and their legions of peer reviewers for supreme sagacity with soaring standards of integrity when reviewing the submitted texts of thinking and data-rich experimental findings. Our unwritten covenant with the peer reviewers and their editors is they all act in the best interest of the profession, ultimately that is translated into, for the best interest of the patient. Recently, in the year 2019, there was comprehensive assessment of peer review reports searching for tools for determining the quality of peer reviewers and their submissions. Those authors plan to continue the quest for new validated quality assessment tools for peer review reports in biomedical research. Numerous critics of the review process asked questions such as the following:1.Is peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals?2.Who reviews the reviewers?3.Editorial peer reviewers’ recommendations at a general medical journal: are they reliable and do editors care?4.Rereviewing peer review.5.Peer review for biomedical publications: we can improve the system.6.Make peer review scientific.7.Custodians of high-quality science: are editors and peer reviewers good enough?