The Case Against the CMJ 's Editors

Abstract

In the News of the Week story, “Croatian editors fight with medical school over journal's fate” (18 April, p. [304][1]), G. Vogel's intention to remain neutral and objective was compromised, as she did not accept the invitation from the Rector of the University of Zagreb to visit and gain insight into the relevant documents. Hence, the story regarding the Croatian Medical Journal ( CMJ ) was predominantly based on opinions of the CMJ editors. The concluding message is that, given the relative success of the journal, its editors should be left alone to do their work. While we do agree that the CMJ has been a relatively successful journal, we believe that the ethical and legal responsibilities of its editors are not beyond the scope of evaluation and discussion. The problems of the editors were caused by their own actions, and not by the reputation of the CMJ . We do not agree with the statement by the Marusic's that “their troubles started in 2001 when the journal rejected a paper by a Zagreb colleague, based on unfavorable reviews.” According to our School's rules, even Ph.D. students cannot defend their doctoral thesis before publishing at least one research article in an international peer-reviewed journal with an impact factor above 1.0. However, the CMJ 's impact factor is around 0.8, and it has been declining. Thus, failure to publish in the CMJ could not “thwart careers” at the University of Zagreb, as suggested by Vogel. We also disagree with the suggestion that the Marusic's have played a pioneering role in bringing to light corruption and plagiarism in the Croatian academic community. They first raised accusations against colleagues only after Ana Marusic was charged with plagiarism and other forms of unethical conduct of research. Since then, Ana Marusic has received a public reprimand (according to our bylaws the mildest among ethical measures) from the School's Court of Honor, for plagiarism of Moore's Clinically Oriented Anatomy textbook for medical students (1992), after three independent, expert committees ascertained that she had deliberately translated substantial parts of the foreign textbook under her name ([1][2]–[4][3]). This was confirmed in a vote of the School's Council: 41 voted affirmative and 4 abstained. It was not a question of one (Croatian) publisher failing to obtain permission from another publisher (Williams & Wilkins), but the simple case of misappropriating 22 out of 26 tables and 30% of the with Moore's specific clinical examples without quoting the author. In addition, the Court of Honor considered Ana Marusic's actions to be even more reprehensible in light of the fact that she not only teaches anatomy but also presides over the Council of Science Editors and serves as co-editor of the CMJ ([4][3]). The fact that she is currently teaching academic integrity to our medical students is especially disturbing. Concurrently, Matko Marusic offended the entire academic and scientific community by accusing them of being corrupt without providing any evidence. This is the real background of the controversy between the CMJ 's editors (not the journal as such) and the Medical School of Zagreb, which has recently introduced rules for professional and ethical conduct of research and teaching quite similar to those practiced at the Yale University. We remain confident that the relative success of the CMJ as a journal cannot and should not be used as an excuse for nontransparent, questionable, and unethical actions by its editors. The main issue is not the editors' fight over the journal's fate, which has never been in question. Rather it is the editors' inappropriate and unacceptable behavior, which is continuously harming the academic community. 1. 1.[↵][4] Report No. 450/2006 of Expert Committee for evaluation of authorship of textbook Human Anatomy (24 October 2006). 2. 2. Report of Committee for Scientific Research of the Medical School (29 May 2007). 3. 3. Report of official court interpreter for English language, L. N. Zanella (12 October 2007). 4. 4.[↵][5] Decision of the Court of Honor at Medical School, University of Zagreb (12 December 2007). [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.320.5874.304a [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-4 [4]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1. in text [5]: #xref-ref-4-1 View reference 4. in text