The Editorial Dilemma in Medical Journals: An Opinion

Abstract

I have published many papers in different medical journals and I noticed there is something that I would like to call it “The Editorial Dilemma”. This editorial dilemma is form of bureaucracy that editors of journals make in front of science publishing. The editors will ask to change the article many times, until the article is not the same idea that the author submitted in the 1st time. This dilemma as well characterized by delaying of articles publishing which will take 6 months to 1 year to publish one article and maybe even more time. The formatting of medical journals are different and each journal ask for different styles of formatting and citation. Most of these journals request publishing fees, open source fees, archiving the article “indexed” on PubMed fees, etc. These obstacles put forward by the editor are restrictions against science which had led to form the research centers publishing groups which is “a formal malpractice”. This practice where endless list of authors, list their names on the paper since publishing needs a team effort and funding for publishing of only one paper. The editor can jump in the peer-reviewing process to become a reviewer then reject the paper or ask for changes which lead to create “preprint online depositories” to avoid the editor dilemma. The editors shape what type of science should be published or not. They determine what science is? And what is not! The editorial dilemma is even chasing the online preprint depositories by forcing them to remove papers from their websites. This level of madness made by the Aristocratic editors is shutting down science in every way possible. I submitted a rare case report before to the Radiology Journal of Case Reports and they asked me to provide a histopathological confirmation for the rare disease! I told the journal that the patient refused to undergo any biopsy operation. The journal refused to publish my paper because the editor jumped in with the reviewers and refused to publish with no histopathology confirmation; even though; 5 top neuroradiologists reviewed the case report and all agreed that this case is extremely rare and they never saw anything like it (i.e. like Dr. House cases), but the editor rejected the case, so his vote takes on 5 neuroradiologists votes. This shows that editors are the biggest dilemma in the way of science.