EDITORIAL. El dilema del Editor ante las circunstancias actuales de la comunicación científica.

Abstract

Recently the scientific community has been the subject of much controversy due to some facts that have arisen. One was the withdrawal of journals by the Web of Science for not carrying out adequate peer review processes and publishing articles lacking in scientific rigor in exchange for high publication costs. In fact, it can be verified that it is common to find works that appear accepted just two or three days after the date of receipt, making it doubtful of an adequate review. Many advocate “Open Science” as the freedom to commu-nicate results without the consent of referees or the sometimes very rigorous requirements of scientific journals. Another example case was that of a researcher sanctioned by his Uni-versity for considering the excessive authorship of works published by the said individual in a very short time, which seems to be doubtful. It is common to find cases of researchers advising working groups from various countries outside their country of origin, perhaps only as statistical analysts or offering their recognized names to stimulate the citation of an in-stitution or country. It would then be appropriate to ask the question: What would be the number of publications that an author may have so that it is not suspected of gratifying or convenient authorship, for himself or for the institution to which he belongs? On the other hand, it is known that authorship of papers may be obtained in high-impact journals through payments or citations that do not correspond to the topic dealt with in the work. Indeed, we have discovered some contributions with out-of-context citations in Investigación Clínicathrough a rigorous analysis of the references. Worse still, it is the communication, carried out by any individual who is not an expert in a field, through the most popular social net-works, of concepts that deeply permeate public opinion in general, being transmitted as if they were proven facts and therein the danger, in the specific case of Medicine, damage to health. For all of the above, the Editors of scientific journals must be very vigilant and ready to discuss the advantages or inconveniences of modern initiatives, the influence of social media in disseminating information, and knowing how to interpret their impact on public health. On the other hand, Journals have to balance the role of citations and impact indexes in the projection of Science individuals, as some academic institutions in European (Spain) or Asian (China) countries are doing.