Prof. M.B. Rokni Editor Iranian Journal of Public Health and Iranian Journal of Parasitology from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Dr.Behrooz Astaneh Editor Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences from Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. The conference was organized in collaboration with University of Health Sciences (UHS), Eastern Mediterranean Association of Medical Editors (EMAME) and Health Research Advisory Board. Mr. Justice (Retd) Amer Raza Khan Chairman Punjab Healthcare Commission was the chief guest while an eminent educationist, former Principal of King Edward Medical College who is also former President of College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan Prof. Kh. Saadiq Husain was the Guest of Honour in the inaugural session. Prof. Mahmood Ali Malik another well known physician of the country and former Principal of King Edward Medical College graced the occasion with his presence as Chief Guest at the Conference Dinner which was also attended by many faculty members and eminent medical personalities.LAHORE: Pakistan Association of Medical Editors (PAME) organized its Second National Conference at University of Health Sciences Lahore from April 26Inaugural SessionMr. Justice Amer Raza Khan said that Punjab Health Care Commission is an autonomous statutory body which is tasked with the responsibility of persuading and enforcing minimum service delivery standards of service. It will also protect them from excesses by the public functionaries and the beneficiaries of such services.Addressing the participants in the inaugural session In order to evolve and induce the service providers, hospitals and clinics to become part of the effort to improve, the Commission has in consultation with the tertiary and secondary hospital managements, doctors , homeopaths , Tabibs and Nurses identified and laid down minimum standards of healthcare and initiated monitoring and evaluation of their working. It is for the first time that equal standards have been laid down for all public and private hospitals and clinics which will be monitored by an independent statutory agency and their performance evaluated. Unfortunately some private medical colleges and their affiliated hospitals have now contributed to the present dismal state of healthcare services in Pakistan. The situation is much worse in healthcare facilities located outside the major cities. As member of the Board of Governors of UHS, I have overseen its efforts in arresting the prevalent chaos in the field of medical education, he added.Continuing Justice Amer Raza Khan said that Punjab Healthcare Commission has decided not to adopt an “enforcement mode” but to solicit and encourage compliance. Initial inspection have revealed a woeful state of affairs which should not be allowed to continue and now in a number of cases, discernible improvements have been achieved and this gives us hope that not only are we on the right track but the objective envisaged are achievable and will be achieved. It will take time and effort. The task is difficult because we are dealing with a profession and with investors who have of late become over assertive and at times defiant. Hence, a cautious approach is the need of the hour.Yet another aspect of our responsibility, Justice Amer Raza Khan said was overseeing and implementation of ethical standards. We do not regulate the licensing of doctors which is done by the PM&DC which is also empowered to deal, with instances of malpractices. In fact PM&DC has jurisdiction over Teaching Hospitals and not all Hospitals. However, it does have disciplinary authority over medical practitioners in the provision of healthcare services by hospitals, clinics and medical practitioners and securing adherence to minimum healthcare standards mutually accepted by them all. Our complaint management system, Mr. Justice Amer Raza Khan further stated, is responsive and thorough to meet all the requirements of due process. Parties to a complaint are given adequate opportunities for presenting their cases. Specialists in relevant fields are engaged to give their opinion and investigatory visits to facilities complained against are conducted for collection of evidence. This Commission has the sole jurisdiction over cases pertaining to alleged medical negligence, malpractice or administrative failure and healthcare service providers have immunity against proceedings conducted against them at other forums. This has been an area which remained unattended for years. We see light at the end of the tunnel now and mutual efforts of all of us will surely not only ensure adherence to ethical values but also improve healthcare standards and resultantly restore and enhance the dignity of all involved in providing acceptable healthcare services, Mr. Justice Amer Raza Khan concluded.Prof. Kh. Saadiq Hussain in his speech discussed in detail various aspects related to medical journalism i.e. Medical Research, the art of Medical Writing, Workshops, Peer Reviewing, Publication Ethics, role of the private sector and information technology. Scanning the conference programme, he said, shows that all relevant issues associated with medical writing and publishing have been covered in the conference for which the organizers need to be commended. Pakistan, Prof. Kh.Saadiq Hussain said has been a late starter in the field of medical journalism and there are genuine reasons for that. To find an answer to this one has to go back nearly seventy years. Medial Journalism is a tightly woven teamwork between authors, reviewers, editors and their teams, publishers, health professionals and policy makers. Any weak link at any point in this chain is enough to disrupt the whole process, he remarked.Many people do not know that when Pakistan came into existence not a single link in the entire chain mentioned above was in place. We had only one medical college in the entire country i.e. KEMC which was severely depleted to the tune of about 70% by the departure/migration of non-Muslim teachers, doctors, administrators, nurses, laboratory staff and even the students. Those of us remaining were overwhelmed by millions of refugees, starving, sick, wounded, and shattered physically and emotionally. In this scenario the pre eminent issue was “Survival” and not ”Research”. There were no authors, hence no reviewers or editors. I as a senior medical student was working as a doctor, a nurse, a lab assistant, a ward bearer, a refugee camp worker ( as the need arose) and of course a student. This was the only human component, the material and financial component was even worse. However, slowly and steadily with faith in Allah and confidence in ourselves, hard work and dedication, the scenario began to change. More medical colleges started in major cities and the country initially with skeleton staff, makeshift or no campuses, and poorly equipped. However, gradually as most of us who had gone abroad usually UK, returned with MRCP or FRCS, and highly qualified faculty became available, the hospitals and colleges were adequately staffed and equipped. In those days Membership or Fellowship was the only exams. Soon after passing those exams, one became stem cell of the profession capable of becoming a member of the medical teaching faculty, a researcher, an author, a medical administrator or health policy maker even though one had received no training what so ever in any of these spheres. I had been teaching for twenty years before I attended the First WHO sponsored workshop on medical education at Lahore. With the passage of time, adequate number of faculty personnel, qualified teachers, numerous medical colleges, we had plenty of ”authors” and would be ”reviewers”. Although we used to have conferences and also wrote articles and case reports for the college journals, we had tremendous difficulty in access to reference materials. For this we often had to approach the British Council library. Eventually it was visionaries and pioneers like Mr. Ayaz Mahmood  , Dr. Sarwar J. Zuberi and later many others including Major. Gen. Aslam, Mr. Shaukat Ali Jawaid and their colleagues who played a vital role in promoting medical journalism as an important subject in its own right.Speaking about Research, Prof. Kh. Saadiq Hussain said that it was an undeniable fact that very little original research comes out of Pakistan in international journals, although research comprises the bulk of contents of journals. It is essential to identify the cause if we hope to correct the problem. Some of the reasons which Prof. Kh. Saadiq Hussain identified included lack of interest, lack of initiative or ability, lack of incentives, reward, lack of funding, inability to meet publishing criteria or all the above. Added to this was the lack of time due to complete involvement with the virus epidemic or rather pandemic CC which stands for Commercialization and Corruption. An in-depth study of the problem and its possible solution is the order of the day and must be tackled on an urgent basis, if we are to achieve our objective of promoting research and documentation.Medical writing especially research articles have a specific format. It needs to be learnt and practiced to be accepted for publication. He suggested that training in medical writing should begin at undergraduate level to promote the “culture of documentation and research.” It is heartening to know that medical writing is already being practiced at some undergraduate medical institutions and in universities in Karachi and Peshawar. At the postgraduate level it is already mandatory but needs considerable improvement as about 50% of manuscripts do not satisfy the publication criteria. Research should have relevance to national issues and needs so that even policy makers can make use of results of medical research.Workshops are an innovation in teaching technology which is extremely useful in converting passive listeners into active participants. Indeed they learn a lot but workshops are the means to an end not an end in themselves. Speaking in a lighter vein, Prof. Kh.Saadiq Hussain remarked that workshop is often treated like any other shop in town, when the shop closes, it is work as usual. He laid emphasis on getting feed back as to the results of such workshops. We conducted workshops for ten years regularly in King Edward Medical College but there was hardly any unit other than mine where simple changes like making and following check lists and OSCE and interactive lectures were routinely adopted in the bedside and ward teaching as well as lecture theaters. I even failed to convince Board of Studies in Punjab University to introduce only 25% MCQs in our final MBBS exams. He stressed the fact that all participants of any workshops must report back after a predetermined period of time in what way have they benefitted by the workshop in their routine work. Passing on the benefit to others, in this way we would be able to evaluate our own workshops usefulness.Talking about Peer Reviewing Prof. Kh. Saadiq Hussain referred to the presentation by Dr. Jamshed Akhtar at the First National Conference on Medial Editing held in 2007 at Army Medical College wherein disappointing response of the reviewers was listed. It also emphasized the care in appointing reviewers to the extent that “we are still unclear what peer review actually does, and can its omission bring any change”. We need more workshops to train reviewers. Continuing Prof.Kh.Saadiq Hussain said that there are some universally accepted rules and regulations in medical publishing. Likewise in all professions there are black sheep who do not abide by the rules. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE UK) has laid down a code of conduct for authors, editors and publishers. It has listed as many as forty seven misdemeanors which can be committed and must be prevented and strictly penalized. The need to uphold professional ethics is much more even today than it ever has been, even institutions are not immune.The mushroom growth of medical colleges will not make any significant impact on publications in the near future because most of the staff in these colleges is retired faculty of public sector institutions. We have been talking of poor writing habits in the past and if people did not write while in active service in youth, they are not likely to start after retirement. Information technology is here to stay and now it is “E everything” including e publications. It is about time that all undergraduate institutions include computer knowledge as an essential part of their curriculum. He concluded his speech by modifying a quotation from a distinguished medical editor Prof. Harvey reported by Mr.Shaukat Ali Jawaid Managing Editor of Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences in one of his book “In general, the only people who love editors are their wives, husbands, children and parents” and Prof. Kh.Saadiq Hussain added to this list honest, dedicated, academicians.Dr. Maqbool H. Jafary President of EMAME also briefly spoke on this occasion. Mr. Shaukat Ali Jawaid Secretary General of EMAME made a presentation highlighting the historical background of formation of EMAME and its activities, accomplishments so far besides showing glimpses from the First National Conference on Medical Editing held at Army Medical College Rawalpindi in 2007 as well as the EMMJ5 organized at CPSP Camps in Karachi in 2010. He also gave details of training courses organized by EMAME in collaboration with PAME at Karachi, Rawalpindi-Islamabad, Peshawar and Lahore besides workshops on medical writing at National University of Malaysia, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences as well as International conference on Medical Writing held at Dubai. Dr.Akhtar Sherin President PAME highlighted the activities of PAME during the last two years. He also announced that HEC has agreed to provide TURNITIN software for screening of manuscripts for plagiarism to journals who are members of PAME for one year to begin with.Prof. Maj. Gen. Muhammad Aslam Vice Chancellor of UHS in his welcome address suggested that PAME should organize its biennial conference by rotation in all the provincial capitals of Pakistan, AJK, Gilgit and Baltistan as well as Federal Capital area. He offered the UHS Campus to organize WAME conference if it can be materialized. Pakistan, he further suggested, should take lead in establishing South Asian Association of Medical Editors (SAAMJE). He thanked chief guest, guest of honour for gracing the occasion with their presence. Earlier Managing Affairs of a Medical JournalMr. Shaukat Ali Jawaid from Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences was the first speaker who talked about how to run a successful biomedical journal. He pointed out that pressure to publish by the faculty to meet academic requirements and decision by various specialty organizations, medical institutions to have their own publications has resulted in more and more biomedical journals being launched by these institutions. However, they have to face lot o difficulties due to lack of any training or experience among those who are entrusted these responsibilities. Some of the essential requirements for running a successful journal, he said, are Good quality manuscripts, Minimum essential staff, Financial sustainability, Active Editorial Board, Good Quality of Reviewers, Increased visibility, Indexation in various databases, Online availability and Easy to use Website. To begin with always assess your strength and resources, move slowly and ensure steady progress, decide about the frequency whether it has to be Biannual, Quarterly, and Monthly. For many it will be better to start with biannual publication (2 issues in a Year) after obtaining the declaration. Carefully select the Editorial Board and Founder members, don’t go for Big Names but Good Workers for editorial board. In the early phase the contents in an issue could include Editorial or Editorial Note, One original article, One Review Article, One Case Report, Clinical Updates, Short Communication, News, Conference Reports, Obituaries, Quiz etc. Make sure that the print issue as well as the website of the journal has detailed comprehensive Instructions for Authors and publication policy, Letter of Undertaking regarding exclusive submission, scanning for plagiarism and approval from the Ethics Committee/IRBs before submission to the journal.The first scientific session during the conference was devoted to a seminar on Managing Affairs of a Medical Journal. It was chaired by Prof. M. Akbar Chaudhry along with Dr. Fatema Jawad while Dr. Jamshed Akhtar acted as the moderator. Online publication is economical, offers increased visibility and readership. It will attract more manuscripts but Print edition is essential. Prepare essential mailing list which should include libraries, institution, PM&DC, HEC and prospective authors. Prepare Reviewers Data Base, have minimum essential staff and ensure timely communication with authors as well as reviewers. Once the journal has been recognized by various bodies and covered by important databases, it will attract more submissions. Follow author friendly policy, seek help and assistance from colleagues, thank the reviewers and impress upon the editorial board members to play an active role. Ensure regular timely publication and give importance to capacity building of staff by attending training courses, workshops. Once you have attracted enough manuscripts, start concentrating on quality, seek coverage by PubMed or PubMed Central, Reuter Thompson/ISI which is known for Impact Factor. Finally it is also essential to know your Rights and Responsibilities as an Editor and continue concerted efforts to further improve the quality of the contents and standard of the journal as the financial and human resource permit.Dr. Bilal Mirza highlighted the success story of APSP Journal of Case Reports (AJCR) which is an electronic open access journal and official publication of the Association of Paediatric Surgeons of Pakistan (APSP). This was a joint venture undertaken by Dr. Bilal Mirza along with Dr. Jamshed Akhtar. The decision to launch this journal, he said, was taken in March 2010. Within six months, the maiden issue of the journal was brought online on 14th August 2010, with a slogan of “a portal for research, innovation, and knowledge”. We became member of Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), within 3 months which greatly improved the journal’s visibility. At the start, the correspondence between authors, reviewers and editors was through the email. The manuscript submission was also allowed only through email. We followed double blind peer review system. We applied for the PubMed Central (PMC) indexing in year 2011 and it was approved in year 2012.That was a big day for the “two men army”. The journal now attracts manuscripts from many countries. We are using open journal system for manuscript submission, tracking, review, and publication. Future plans include induction of the young blood in the editorial board to facilitate journal’s workflow. Our motto is “When there is a will there is a way without compromising on integrity, standards, and ethical principles”, he added.Dr. Saeeda Baig talked about their experience of launching an E journal from Ziauddin Medial University, Karachi. Mr. Muhammad Zafaruddin from JCPSP in his presentation pointed out that the main goal of their journal was to promote and disseminate clinical and evidence based medical research as well as to educate and promote research culture and medical writing skill. He described success story of JCPSP spanning 23 years of its existence. The journal was launched in 1991 as a quarterly journal which became bimonthly in 1995, monthly in 1999 and included in Index Medicus (MEDLINE) in 2002. It is also indexed by more than a dozen leading indexing agencies of the world.JCPSP was the first biomedical journal in Pakistan to attain Impact Factor in 2009; the journal has a dedicated website with free access, no fee is charged from contributors, and it is a trends setter in many areas with its own printing press and the full support of internationally recognized body – CPSSP. Managing Editor is the key person who organizes all the activities, dealing with managerial and administrative issues and is responsible for communication with contributors, reviewers, sister journals and editorial board members.JCPSP has an organized office set up, a full time Managing Editor, two honorary Editors, two honorary Associate Editors and full time office staff including an Editorial Assistant, a Graphic Designer, two Statisticians, a Bibliographer, a Publication Officer, three Publication Assistants and an office boy, he remarked.Prof. Nasir Khokhar Editor Rawal Medical Journal from Islamabad talked about challenges the Medical Editors have to face in Pakistan. Though Medical editors have various challenges everywhere in the world but in Pakistan, he said, we have unique problems which may not be considered elsewhere by medical editors. We start with extremely poor submissions. The authors do not read and follow the “Instructions for authors” which can be different for different journals. Several authors do not know the proper use of electronic submission process. Multiple times the manuscripts have to be returned for re-submission. The manuscripts are often much disorganized. The usual format is not followed. The concepts are not clear. Frequent repetitions make the manuscript lengthy and redundant. Authors do not revise according to reviewers’ suggestions. Reviewers delay the review a lot. Several of them have no specific review expertise while many are unfamiliar with web-based review, he added.Second SessionDr. Behrooz Astaneh from Shiraz Iran along with Prof. Khalid Masood Gondal from CPSP chaired this session which was moderated by Dr. Muhammad Irfan.Sarwar Zuberi Memorial LectureProf. M.B. Rokni Editor of Iranian Journal of Public Health from Tehran University of Medical Sciences delivered Dr. Sarwar Zuberi Memorial lecture. The theme of his presentation was the present situation of medical journalism in Iran. He pointed out that as Iran has prepared a 20-years perspective document which aims that the number of scientific journals should increase so that Iran can get the 1st rank in the region in terms of science production. To achieve this objective, lot of emphasis is being laid on not only increasing the number of journals but also improving their quality and standard. At present there are 315 approved journals by the Iranian Ministry of Health Overall, 154 journals are published in English language followed by 161 in Persian with English Abstract.Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Prof. Rokni said with 31 journals published in English is the leader followed by Shiraz and Mashhad universities, which publish 20 and 17 biomedical journals respectively. In terms of indexing in authentic databases, there are 66 journals present in ISI master list, from which 23 medical journals are covered by Web of Sciences which have got an Impact Factor. The rate of IF varies from 0.086 to 1.2. As for SCOPUS, 87 from 127 journals are considered medical. Bedsides, 49 journals are covered by PMC/PubMed/Medline.nd after Turkey with 38000 papers in the region .Based on SCIMAGO data, during the period 1996-2012, Iran in the arena of Medicine is allocated the following items: H index: 82; Documents: 38147; Citable documents 35492; Citations 131537; Self-citations 43207 and Citation per document 3, 45. Prof. Rokni further stated that every year the Iranian MOH based on different indices such as Technical indices, covering by 1-3 degree scientific databases, timing, circulation etc., classifies all Medical Journals. The criteria are >95 points: Level 1; 65-94: Level 2 and <95 Level 3. Accordingly the International Journal of Preventive Medicine from Isfahan University of Medical Sciences with 120 points had the highest rank followed by the least ranked journals (three cases) each of which of 30 points. A birds’ eye view on the current situation of Medical Journalism in Iran shows a satisfactory situation based on international criteria but obviously the quality also needs to be improved along with the quantity, he concluded. According to data released by Thomson Reuters ISI, in 2013, the number of published papers in this database, was 32600 with Iran ranked 2Dr. Saba Sohail from JCPSP made a presentation on editing qualitative studies in medical education for a general biomedical journal. Her conclusions were that the main editing issue was the author-editor in-house disagreement regarding study design and format as qualitative studies differed markedly from quantitative studies which form the majority of submissions and citations. We have now prepared separate guidelines for qualitative studies which will be included in the revised manuscript submissions, she added.Dr. Fatema Jawad from JPMA was the next speaker who described how they handled frequent submissions from a single author at JPMA. She pointed out that a single author submitted to them 46 articles, 29 original articles and 17 letters, from February to October, 2012. The articles were on diverse subjects ranging from Dermatology to medicine, paediatrics, surgery and microbiology. The corresponding author was a student for all articles and first author for 8 originals and 12 letters. The co-authors were senior faculty members. The average submissions were five per month. This gave a cause for suspicion as how could a student get time to conduct research, analyze the results and write the articles at this frequency, besides performing his clinical work and studies? The required documents were checked and it was observed that the signatures of all authors on the submission certificate appeared forged and the authors of all articles had an email on yahoo.com. Guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics were followed and letters were sent to the author with relevant questions. The author was questioned, who wrote back “I am one of the best researchers of my country and have multiple publications in every field of medicine and have won multiple prizes.”The Vice-Chancellor of the university was contacted, with no response. The chief of the research committee of the university was contacted who supported the author in a very unconvincing manner. However we had no satisfactory reply from the author. The case was put up in the COPE Forum in June 2013 and the members advised to ask the university to depute someone to talk to the student, Secondly the co-authors should be contacted for their view and some higher authority or ministry of research should be taken into confidence on the matter. It was also suggested that the concerned author could be a psychopath .Two co-authors could be contacted who said this was a case of fraud. They had not co-authored the articles and did not know the first author. An internet search revealed the retraction of a published article by the same author due to authorship issues. Another senior co-author wrote back that he was shocked to see the paper published. He had no knowledge about it. He wrote that he did not know this author and never met him. He also claimed that his published data was stolen. He said he would forward this message to the ethics department and complain to the university.The case was followed up in the COPE Forum of September, 2013 the members advised to contact a higher authority of the University for investigating the case. If investigations were not performed then editor should publish the findings of the journal’s enquiry. They also advised to contact other journals with articles of the concerned author. The correspondence was carried out with the Secretary National Ethics Committee who wrote that the university was conducting an investigation and confirmed that more misconduct had been detected against this author. He also suggested that the journal should take an independent decision on the unprocessed articles lying in the journal’s office The decision of the editorial board was to close all the 27 files on grounds of Fraud and debar the author. The Secretary National Research Ethics Committee of the author’s university and COPE Forum were informed. It was concluded that this was a case of fraud and was detected by vigilance. COPE guidelines and advice of the Forum members were very helpful, she concluded.Dr. Jamshed Akhtar’s presentation was on study designs and statistical analysis- Editor’s dilemma. He pointed out that most of the editors are not formally trained in epidemiology and biostatistics. Deficiencies in study designs and statistics nullify purpose of publication. Many journals do not have dedicated staff to address this part of the manuscripts. We tried to find out that deficiencies in study deign and statistical analysis in the manuscripts submitted to JCPSP. It was a retrospective analysis. Total number of manuscripts included in the study was sixty. Statistical tests were found incorrect in thirty one; descriptive statistics was incorrect or incomplete in another thirty-five while inferential statistics was incorrect in thirty nine manuscripts. Most of these manuscripts had to be revised numerous times. He laid emphasis on training the principal investigators in this area. He was of the view that editors must have background knowledge, attend short courses while PAME should also organize some workshops to train the editors, he added.Online Learning Resource for EditorsDr. Masood Jawaid Assistant Editor at Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences who is also its Project Director. This learning resource was formally commissioned in the second scientific session on Day one of the conference where Dr. Masood Jawaid also gave a brief demonstration about the contents it contains. e-Resources for Editors: Free stuff by Dr. Masood Jawaid (Pak J Med Sci), Study designs for quantitative study by Dr. Jamshed Akhtar (J Coll Physicians Surg Pak),Authorship by Shaukat Ali Jawaid, Holistic approach for Epidemiological Study Designs with emphasis on RCT by Dr. Farwa Rizvi. It offers free access to the editors and authors of biomedical journals on PAME website. www.pame.org.pkPakistan Association of Medical Editors formally launched its Online Learning Resource for Editors during the Second National Conference. It is the brain child of Prof. Umar Ali Khan, Pro Vice Chancellor, Isra University made a presentation on quality medical writing. He stated that an author of a medical manuscript must be clear about the types of writing like internal reports, regulatory reports, Conference presentations; oral and poster presentations and Journal articles. Journal articles include original research paper, review article, case report, letter to editor etc. As it is said if you fail to plan then you Plan to fail so be realist for original research by designing a clear research question, have statistician’s opinion about the study design, work with an open mind, authorship should be clearly decided. Maintain patient confidentiality. Author can have guidance from International Committee of Medical Journal Editors uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. The manuscript should be kept simple and to the point. The data must be accurate free of false results and plagiarism. Even negative results should also be presented. The message of research, he stated, should be clearly reflected in introduction, methods, results and discussion. The conclusion drawn should be logical. Whenever we get the review of our article we should not get mad rather we should feel happy that reviewers and editors are helping us to improve the quality of our publication.We must experience medical writing as it is said “There is no way to get experience except through experience” he remarked.Workshopsth 2014, four workshops were organized. The workshop cum interactive seminar on Medical Writing was conducted by Mr. Shaukat Ali Jawaid and Prof Anwar Siddiqui. Dr. Fatema Jawad along with Dr Behrooz Astaneh from Shiraz Iran and Dr. Muhammad Irfan conducted the workshop on Publication Ethics. Prof. M.B.Rokni from Tehran, Iran was the facilitator in the workshop on Journal Indexing while Dr. Masood Jawaid along with Dr. Akhtar Sherin conducted the workshop on Electronic Publishing. In the afternoon of Day One of the conference i.e. April 26Third Sessionth, this session was chaired by Prof. M.B.Rokni from Tehran Iran along with Prof. Junaid Sarfaraz Khan Pro VC UHS Lahore. Dr. Masood Jawaid was the first speaker who in his presentation discussed the progress made by Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences during the Year 2013.Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, he said was one of the leading biomedical peer reviewed medical journal from Pakistan which has to its credit tremendous achievements during the last year. These include bimonthly frequency from quarterly, Digital Object Identifier (DOI) assignment for every manuscript with an agreement with CrossRef. For detection of plagiarism, use of iThenticate software by CrossCheck screening every manuscript accepted for peer review. PubMed Central (PMC) indexing is another milestone with availability of all of its manuscript in XML format effective January 2013. In addition in collaboration with ‘The Medical Writers’ the Journal has helped training of more than 100 doctors within the country and overseas through its ‘Online Research Course’. He also discussed how PJMS achieved these goals and gave some suggestions for other Journals of the region how they can achieve all this.On Day Two of the conference April 27Dr. Jamshed Akhtar from JCPSP talked about analysis of articles based upon qualitative study designs: Are the Editors doing justice? Qualitative research, he pointed out includes broad category of partially overlapping research types including action research, case study research or grounded theory etc. He also highlighted the differences between qualitative and quantitative research besides discussing the three qualitative methods. His conclusions were that editors should prepare themselves for yet another challenge. They must understand qualitative designs so as to do justice while processing these manuscripts.Shaukat Ali Jawaid talked about citation amnesia. This presentation was based on a case study. He pointed out that Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences in its June 2013 issue published a Review on Depression covering inflammatory Hypothesis. This manuscript had 89 references mostly covering the Reviews published in the last ten years. This prompted a European Psychiatrist himself Editor of a Psychiatric Journal to call it an intellectual property theft and citation plagiarism. He complained that his work has not been properly cited and wished that the paper should be withdrawn and an apology from the authors published by the journal. He even threatened to take the case to COPE and report to other agencies like Higher Education Commission in Pakistan, head of the institution of the authors, besides various international databases. He also gave deadlines for the response from the Editor. He was asked to send his viewpoint which will be published along with the response from authors but he insisted that the manuscript must be removed from the website and he be given four to five pages to respond to this failing which, he again threatened to take up the issue with COPE and other bodies. Such a behaviour and threatening tone in his communications raised many ethical questions related to publication ethics, duties and responsibilities of Editors as well as their rights and privileges. Dr. Behrooz Astaneh COPE Council member who is also affiliated with Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences as an Ombudsman was consulted who opined that we had adopted a correct approach. Correspondence with this author through e mail continued for over six weeks and when he insisted on removal of the manuscript from the website, he was told that it was not possible and we are fully aware of our rights and responsibilities as Editors and it worked. The take home message in this presentation was that while dealing with such cases of citation amnesia or plagiarism don’t get emotional, be polite in language you use. Keep all the record of such correspondence. Ask for Advice from senior colleagues. Be mindful of your Responsibilities, give chance to readers to comment, criticize on published contents. Publish all this with response from the authors. Safeguard and protect your Rights & Privileges and refuse to be intimidated and don’t succumb to pressure tactics and such threatening e mails and dictatorial attitude. Dr. Saeeda Baig from Karachi talked about tribulations of reviewing a journal manuscript. Ramsha Zaheer from Karachi talked about Editorial Problems in Students' Articles Submitted to JPMA. The objective of this retrospective study was to document the editorial problems in articles submitted to the student’s corner at JPMA from January 2012 to December 2013.The problems were divided under five headings. As far as the quality of the manuscript was concerned, the most common problems were faced in statistics, where either the frequency or percentage would be missing, and the references, where 50% did not adhere to the correct format. Multiple submissions as letters to the editor were also noted    which did not add anything new which was not already available in textbooks. Lot of delays were faced in submitting an ethical review board approval or a similar document  after JPMA made it compulsory to submit a document verifying the approval instead of just mentioning it in the paper. Further delays in the processing of the article were made due to late response from the peer reviewers  and the authors, who would understandably be busy with their exam schedules. However, the most important issue faced was that the authorship criteria were not followed. These included supervisor being the first author (2), changes made in the author order (2), deleting authors from the initial submission list (1) and making submission to the journal without informing the co-authors (1). Her conclusions were that it is important to guide students not only how to write a scientific paper but also ethics regarding research. Dr. Osama Ishtaq, Project Manager PakMediNet made a presentation on audit of medical journals of Pakistan. PakMediNet, he said was an index database of articles published in the medical journals of Pakistan. It is the only database available online and is providing free services for the last 13 years. Users can search using various variables which includes free phrase search, search on titles, journal names, author names, abstracts and keywords. Currently this database contains 75 medical journals of Pakistan comprising of more than 21,000 articles (titles and abstracts) and 1530 issues. Prof. Mohammad Aslam, Prof. of Obstetrics and Gynaecology from Lahore talked about advantages, disadvantages and alternatives to Peer Review. He pointed out that peer review is the assessment by an expert of the scientific material submitted for publication. It is considered as gold standard. However, despite its widespread use and costs, little hard evidence exists that per review improves the quality of published biomedical research. Peer Review does ensure that published research is original, important and timely, technically reliable, consistent and well presented. It is a quality control measure but its weakens is that it is slow, expensive, wastes lot of academic time, it is highly subjective, prone to bias, can be easily abused and is considered very poor at detecting gross defects and academic fraud. However, it does improve quality of the manuscripts before publication. Post publication reviews, manuscript management and peer review software, citation analysis and impact factor were mentioned as some of the alternatives to peer review. Open peer review is the latest. Peer review system, certainly needs some improvements to make it more useful, he added.Mehwish Hussain from DUHS discussed the Statistical Flaws in Manuscripts Submitted to JPMA.Non compliance with statistical rules leads toward likelihood for rejection of manuscript. The objective of this study was to find out the frequent flaws observed in submitted manuscript during last two years. The most recurrent problem was incorrect or unreported sample size calculation of the study. Alignment of the statistical analysis with objective and title of the study was observed to be the foremost flaw. Specification of related sampling technique and explicit sampling procedure were also absent especially in randomized controlled trial and community based studies. Description of external validity of sampled population was also missing. Inferential statistics were applied and reported without testing the prior related assumptions. Inaccurate advanced statistical tests was observed as the key flaw in this regard. Her conclusions were that statistical inaccuracies ranged from sampling stage to advanced data analysis in manuscript submitted to JPMA. Medical researchers must involve statistician not only for data analysis but at the initial stage of the study.Fourth SessionProf. Nasir Khokhar along with Prof. Noshin Wasim Yousuf chaired this session while Prof. Ijaz Hussain acted as the moderator. Manzar Saleem Memorial LectureDr. Behrooz Astaneh, from Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences who is also Council Member of COPE delivered Prof. Manzar Saleem Memorial Lecture. Title of his presentation was COPE- the aims and new features. He discussed at length the issues related to authorship disputes, conflict of interest, duplicate submissions, the redundant publications, plagiarism, data fabrication and falsification. The reason for unethical behaviour, he opined, could be intentional i.e. pressure to publish or due to lack of knowledge. Many researchers do not know what can be considered as misconduct while many editorial board members are not aware of the exact definition of various misconducts and many editors do not know how to tackle these misconducts. The objective of various bodies like COPE, EMAME, WAME and PAME are to treat lack of knowledge cause of ethical misbehavior among editors and researchers. However, he remarked that even training won’t do anything to those who deliberately commit ethical misconduct. He then highlighted various famous cases of fraud.The objective of COPE, Dr.Behrooz Astneh said was to promote integrity in research publications. At present COPE has over nine thousand members from 75 countries and it covers almost all academic disciplines and fields. COPE provides advice and resources to editors and publishers on all aspects of publication ethics. It has a twenty member council from eleven countries. COPE has so far produced Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guide for Journal Editors, Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers, Guidelines for Retracting articles. It has produced Flow Charts on redundant, duplicate publications, plagiarism, fabricated data, changes in authorship, Ghost, guest or gift authorship, conflict of interest, general suspected ethical concerns and reviewer’s misconduct. COPE membership offers many advantages including free participation in COPE seminars, access to eLearning packages and use of ethical audit tools. More recently COPE has produced some eLearning programmes aimed at improving the editor’s abilities to deal with publication misconduct, to give editor’s deeper understanding of publication ethics besides how to detect and handle misconduct. COPE publishes a monthly Digest and organizes regional seminars in different countries, he added.Shaukat Ali Jawaid discussed Burnout Syndrome (BOS) among medical journal editors. Defining BOS, he said it was a work related disorder. It consists of symptoms of emotional exhaustion, physical fatigue, and cognitive weariness which results from ineffective coping with enduring stress. It is also associated with decreased job performance, low career satisfaction and affects behavior, personality as well as professional goals. Some of the causative factors include little appreciation of the work, little time for the family, little time for relaxation and holidays. Burnout Syndrome is a well known entity and has been extensively documented among various categories of healthcare professionals like psychiatrists, critical care physicians, nurses, those working in ICU, CCUs, oncologists, those looking after terminally ill patients, medical residents, those working in Emergency Medicine Departments and primary healthcare physicians. Medical Editors also suffer from burnout syndrome but we tend to ignore it. It has not been documented in the literature as well. He then gave the results of a small study which was conducted among members of Pakistan Association of Medical Editors (PAME).Out of the fourteen responses; two were Full Time and twelve part time Editors. Eight out of fourteen Editors reported to have noticed Burnout Syndrome. Their most frustration came from authors and reviewers. Full time professional Editors working at small journals with financial, human manpower constraints but aspiring for indexation in major data bases, eager to improve the standard and quality of their journal, establishing high expectations, those totally committed and devoted are at a greater risk of suffering from burnout syndrome as they try to achieve their objective with little or no support. He then suggested some of the positive interventions to overcome this problem of Burnout Syndrome like Make a Team and Delegate responsibilities, have written contract with rights and responsibilities, Insist on EC/IRB approvals of studies which is helpful in taking care of Scientific misconduct, academic fraud, Screening for plagiarism of all manuscripts, Training of Journal support staff and giving them Incentives to Retain them. Continuing, he further stated that it is nice to be an Idealist but Be a Realist- have realistic expectations, Go Slow and have modest Goals to begin with, Attend Workshops, Training courses, go for continuing professional development, Share thoughts with colleagues and learn how they tackle such problems you are faced with which will provide lot of Energy to cope with such a situation.Prof. Anwar Siddiqui from AKUH was the next speaker who highlighted the need to have better coordination between institutions and journals to ensure integrity of research and publications. Plagiarism, Falsification, wrong attribution, misleading information was mentioned as some of the misconducts. He then referred to a case wherein a second year medical student got his paper published in a Korean Journal without the knowledge of supervising faculty, the work was sponsored by a granting agency that was also not acknowledged. The institution when came to know about it requested the editors to put the publication on hold till few things were sorted out. In another case samples for the study came from UAE, they were analyzed in Pakistan and France but none of the authors were from UAE. No ethical approval was obtained from anywhere and it was published in Pakistan. There are reports of fake or misleading research institutes hence in case of misconduct who should be held responsible, he asked? Prof. Anwar Siddiqui suggested that biomedical journal editors need to follow the COPE guidelines, carefully check the author’s affiliations, nature of job and insist on Ethics Committee/IRB approval before accepting any manuscript for publication. Both Journals and Institutions have important duties. Journals are responsible for the conduct of their editors for safeguarding research record and ensuring reliability. Institutions should have research integrity officers and inform journals of proven misconduct, provide information if asked for by the journals which can go a long way in checking authorship disputes and misleading reporting. For better coordination institutions should develop policies on authorship, misconduct and intellectual property rights. Prof. Ijaz Hussain, Editor, Journal of Pakistan Association of Dermatologists spoke about the problems and challenges faced while managing their journal. My 11-year experience as Editor of this Journal, he said, had been a turbulent voyage. Problem faced included scarcity of funds, lack of quality peer-review, ethical issues like plagiarism, misappropriation of authorship, duplicate submissions, and urgent publication. The future challenges that we are facing include getting the journal impact factor, indexation in the MEDLINE, recognition by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and changes in website. Prof. Muhammad Moin Editor Pakistan Journal of Ophthalmology talked about the impact of maintaining a website for the Journal. He gave the results of a survey conducted among the readers of their journal and received twenty one responses. It showed that the contents of the journal have improved over the last few years; the topics covered in the journal are relevant. There were ten questions in all in this survey covering various aspects. Many felt that peer review was convenient using computer editing and e mail and retrieval of favorite articles was also easier in electronic version. . His conclusions were that maintaining the website of the journal improves the satisfaction of the readers.Dr. S.H. Waqar from PIMS Islamabad presented comparative analysis of articles published in national and international medical journals. Quality of the medical journal, he said, was directly related to the competence and interest of authors, reviewers and the editors. In this study they assessed one hundred fifty two articles which included 104 international and forty eight national. For comparison, various sections of manuscripts like abstract, introduction, methods, results and discussion besides conclusions and references were reviewed. Study design was also looked into. Among the international manuscripts, 87.5% were excellent as compared to 23% in national manuscripts. Again 12.5% were good in international manuscripts as compared to 6% in the national manuscripts and 52% of the national manuscripts were found to be highly unsatisfactory. The study conclusions were that quality of national articles is highly variable. Many articles do not follow the recommended tools of systematic methods and there was need for continuous training of authors, reviewers as well as editors.Prof. Nazeer Khan from DUHS spoke about the pattern of dental research in Pakistani dental journals during the last decade. He pointed out that only two dental journals are being published regularly in Pakistan. Two hundred forty three articles were published in Journal of Pakistan Dental Association and 338 were published in PODJ. Most of the published papers were original articles 73.7% followed by Case Reports 1 3.4%. About one third of these articles belonged to epidemiology followed by patient’s series while manuscripts on clinical trials and dental materials were only 5% each. Two third of the published articles could be described as clinical research while one third consisted of basic research and oral pathology and community dentistry. Among the clinical research articles, papers related to orthodontics accounted for 34.4%.Dr. Muhammad Irfan from JPMI Peshawar talked about mutual cooperation among journals: Is it effective in preventing publication misconduct? He highlighted the benefits of mutual cooperation of Journal of postgraduate Medical Institute and Khyber Medical University Journal in preventing issues pertaining to publication misconduct. He was of the view that although every editor wants to have a smooth sailing regarding publication of his journal, it is only possible in Utopia and one has to face incidents of Publication misconduct. So, if these issues do occur, one can either try to avoid these issues or be ready to tackle them. He then shared three cases describing the ways used to tackle such issues by mutual cooperation. He suggested that a mechanism needs to be devised between the journals to avoid such incidences. This can be done in the form of sharing the cue sheets, before publishing the article or discussing such cases at PAME Listserve and other forums or/ and educating authors, reviewers and Editors.Conference Recommendationsth, Dr. Akhtar Sherin the outgoing President of PAME presented the following recommendations of the conference which were all approved after discussion.  In the General Body meeting held in the evening of First Day of the Conference i.e. April 26PAME should be given representation in journal’s indexation committees of PMDC & HEC.Institutions/ universities should arrange/encourage CPD programs in medical journalism and research in collaboration with PAME Institutions/ universities should establish IRBB to address ethical issues in research and In future, IRBB approval may be considered mandatory for articles to be published in medical journalsAll journals should follow the COPE guidelines in addressing issues related to publication ethicsBiennial conference of PAME should be held in all provinces on rotation basis, with subsequent workshops in different areas of PakistanPakistan should take a lead in establishing SAAME (SAARC ASSOCIASTION OF MEDICAL EDITORS) and Medical journals from Pakistan should ensure maximum participation in the next EMAME Conference likely to be held in Iran.


It is now just over 1 year since I took over the Editorship of Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses (IRV). In that time, there have been many changes to the journal and, of course, in the wider world of respiratory viruses. I'd like to begin by thanking my predecessor and the journal's Founding Editor, Dr. Alan Hampson. Alan set up, nurtured and grew IRV into a vibrant and successful publication before officially handing over the reins in early 2014. He remains on the team as one of our Senior Editors. Indeed my task as Editor-in-Chief would be impossible without the fantastic and dedicated team of Senior Editors, Associate Editors and professional staff at Wiley, who support me, and all of whom deserve many personal thanks.The challenges posed by respiratory viruses remain as important as ever for global public health, and clinical practice. In the aftermath of the 2009 pandemic, governments and public health agencies are wrestling with ‘pandemic fatigue’, austerity programmes (that limit the appetite and ability to invest in pandemic preparedness), and a false impression among some politicians that since the 2009 pandemic was rather mild and ‘not much to write home about’, pandemic preparedness is in fact ‘no big deal’. In amongst this mix are real issues pertaining to the ongoing controversy about the effectiveness of antiviral drugs,5Most public health agencies and individual experts, consider the potential pandemic threat posed by influenza A(H5N1) to be undiminished. But in addition, influenza AH7N9) is now, if anything, considered a higher potential risk.N9 is nowIf one shifts the focus away from influenza, the ongoing MERS-CoV outbreak in the Middle East, is also of substantial concern, because despite its likely introduction into humans via close contact with dromedary camels,13Seasonal influenza too, should not be overlooked as an ongoing problem. In the northern hemisphere winter of 2014–15 we have experienced substantial influenza A(H3N2) activity. Unfortunately this has coincided with a poorly matched H3N2 vaccine component that has resulted in low effectiveness against the circulating H3N2 strains in the community.From the journal's perspective, to be in the best possible position to respond to these emerging and sometimes fast-moving threats, we have made some recent changes that enable us to publish findings with minimal delay. For papers of significant importance, we can offer a rapid peer-review scheme, which should enable us to make a decision on a manuscript within 14 days (or less). We have also improved our arrangements for all accepted articles (whether fast-tracked or not). Following acceptance, we can now publish all articles, as unedited manuscripts, online within 1 week of acceptance.We have also reconsidered the arrangements for review articles that we publish. We recognise that Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses have become a central part of evidence synthesis in modern science and medicine. With this has come the setting of standards for the conduct of such work: the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines;Hopefully these changes, along with our now well-established Open Access format will maintain the journal as a vibrant publication that is relevant, and highly accessible, to scientists and clinicians working in the field of respiratory virus infection for the foreseeable future.Authors have the option to request rapid peer-review. Papers considered for rapid peer-review will need to be of immediate relevance, interest, or importance to scientists, clinicians, public health practitioners or policy makers, usually in relation to a current or evolving event related to respiratory virus activity. In general, papers that report data more than 6 months old are unlikely to be considered eligible. If your paper qualifies for rapid peer-review, the journal will aim to have your paper turned round within 14 days. There is no additional charge for authors with rapid peer-review.irv.eo@wiley.com, at least 1 week before online submission with an abstract; list of authors; please ensure a PRISMA checklist is completed if your paper is a Systematic Review article; details of research funding and disclosures of potential conflicts of interest should also be included.Step #1 - Authors will need to contact the Editorial Office Step #2 - The Editors will confirm whether your paper will qualify for rapid peer-review. The decision is final and non-negotiable.Step #3 - Submit the paper via the ScholarOne system.Accepted Articles have been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but have not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process. Accepted Articles are published online a few days after final acceptance, appear in PDF format only, are given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which allows them to be cited and tracked, and are indexed by PubMed.


This editorial introduces the EMBL-EBI channel in F1000Research. The aims of the channel are to present EMBL-EBI outputs and collate research published on F1000Research contributed, in whole or in part, EMBL-EBI researchers. The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) has a mandate to provide freely available data and services to the global scientific community, and is a champion for open data in the life sciences. We provide a comprehensive suite of molecular databases and lead the development of Europe PMC, a free information resource offering unrestricted access to millions of full-text publications.F1000Research channel complements EMBL-EBI’s website and services, providing a new platform for research articles, but also for publishing technical documents, white papers and other materials of potential interest to the many scientists who use our resources. The flexibility of this channel allows us to share documents that may not fit neatly into the classic publishing model with more visibility and coherence: as a single collection, rather than scattered amongst various websites. We hope that this will provide an opportunity for increased transparency on the services and projects in which we participate, and make it possible to cite and refer to many kinds of useful information. In addition, we hope it will give the authors of these materials an opportunity to take credit for their work.ThisF1000Research channels, in particular those closely related to the scope of the EMBL-EBI such as those ofELIXIR and theISCB. We welcome your comments on the opening of this channel, and your feedback on the kinds of material you would like us to make available.We look forward to contributing to a growing network of useful and forward-looking content across all


CDD number three! On the shoulders of the success of Cell Death & Differentiation (CDD), and Cell Death & Disease (CDDis), together with Nature Publishing Group, we are now launching the third journal of the group, Cell Death Discovery (CDDiscovery), a dynamic, innovative and creative journal, committed to publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed research and review material.Here it is! Cell Death Discovery is an international, online-only, open-access journal dedicated to publication of scientific findings at the intersection of biomedical research and cell death with the principal focus of scientifically sound work. At a time when concern about the reproducibility of scientific data has become a significant issue, Cell Death Discovery will put procedures in place to help guarantee this fundamental aspect and support solid scientific research. It is committed to the rapid publication of high-quality original papers that relate to these subjects, together with topical, usually solicited reviews, editorial correspondence and commentaries on controversial and scientifically informative issues. Unrestricted access to research findings in Cell Death Discovery will foster a dynamic and highly productive dialogue between scientists and clinicians, as well as researchers in industry with a focus on cancer, neurobiology and inflammation research.Cell Death & Differentiation, Cell Death & Disease and Cell Death Discovery constitute the CDD brand, hereinafter CDD-erc. The CDD brand has had strong involvement in scientific communication for many years, having launched three distinct journals: CDD in 1994, currently with an impact factor of 8.5, CDDis, in 2010, currently with an impact factor of 5.5 and now CDDiscovery, launching in 2015. In addition, CDD-erc organises and is a proud supporter of many scientific conferences.Together CDD-erc branding, a guarantee per se, CDDiscovery is also published by Nature Publishing Group (NPG). NPG uses pioneering technologies, innovative formats and first-class editing to provide cutting-edge, timely information for researchers in the public and private sectors, government agencies, educators, clinicians and the general public. By working with scientists, listening to what they say, and always placing emphasis on quality, NPG is the leading publisher for innovative solutions to scientists' information needs. This new journal provides plenty of scope to trial new publishing ideas, and we have a number of new ideas to try … watch this space! Similar to NPG, our editors, who are all actively publishing scientists themselves, will be keen to engage with and find new ways to serve you, our readers.In parallel to the Cell Death Discovery articles will not be indexed in PubMed right away; however, pending review and acceptance, all past published articles will be indexed retrospectively. For PubMed, according to the NLM website, the journal will need to first publish several months worth of copy, and then go through the normal process of being reviewed, which typically takes about 4–6 months . For PubMed Central, full indexing entails publication of 50 articles, and also a separate data evaluation review, which can take up to 6 months. However, authors with NIH/HHMI funding are able and encouraged to self-archive; this includes uploading manuscripts to PubMed Central before the journal is officially accepted. One particular advantage of being part of the CDD family is that we are able to increase the visibility of the articles published in Cell Death Discovery using the CDD and CDDis sister platforms, to compensate for the initial reduced Medline visibility.As for any new journal, full indexing in PubMed and PubMed Central takes time. Cell Death Discovery has selected a prestigious group of Associate Editors, appointed from a pool of what their colleagues describe as ‘rising stars’. Importantly, we intend that these editors: R Aqeilan , M-L Asselin-Labat (Melbourne), N Barlev (Saint Petersburg), Q Chen (Bejing), I Harris (Boston), R Killick (London), C Parish (Melbourne), A Rufini (Leicester), AE Sayan (Southampton), K Schroder (Brisbane), K Simon (Oxford) and M Tavassoli (London) reflect the type of scientist that will submit to Cell Death Discovery . They come from around the globe, have a broad range of scientific expertise that is not restricted to cell death, and are dynamic and enthusiastic. They will be a driving engine in our goal of guaranteeing quality and timely decisions (Like any respected journal, ecisions .Cell Death Discovery? Our goal in setting up this new journal has been to address some of the deficiencies that affect us and our colleagues in the current publishing environment. Some are already being addressed by other journals and we endorse their efforts while feeling confident that we have the ability to directly contribute our own solutions.Why publish in The problem of biased reviews will be addressed with double-blind peer review, whereby both the author and reviewer identities remain anonymous. By removing any chance of bias the review process will be more effective and efficient.Cell Death Discovery submissions will, however, be dealt with by strong editorial oversight, and editorial decisions will not be handballed to reviewers. Papers will undergo the usual and well-established peer review process, but the focus will be on technical quality and reproducibility of content.Lengthy review processes are a real drag on the scientific process and we know of many cases where it has taken over a year from submission to acceptance because of a lack of editorial engagement. Lack of reproducibility in scientific reporting is an emerging issue that strikes at the essence of science itself. This seems to be driven by the fact that many journals appear to value novelty and significance above solid research. It is also linked to the problem that journals are, in our experience, reticent to publish studies that fail to repeat earlier work. Therefore, we explicitly encourage authors to send us work that either upholds, or fails to uphold, earlier work. Our criteria will be scientific quality, and we will appropriately recognise and discuss both successes and failures.Your articles will be freely available under a creative commons licence allowing global dissemination and distribution via NPG’s publishing platform nature.com.Your data will be automatically checked for plagiarism and for image defects by dedicated staff and software, and we will insist on attribution of authorship for each data panel. Combined with a detailed submission checklist, we will take a lead in correctly representing data and attributing responsibility for that data. With these measures we will reduce unwanted and inadvertent errors and weed out malfeasance.CDD brand, our Editorial Board with their ideas and willingness to try new approaches and the backing of Nature Publishing Group, Cell Death Discovery will rapidly become a huge success.Welcome to our new experiment! As good scientists, we know we should not prejudge the outcome, but just this once we will. We are convinced that with the established


The main principles of the OA movement were defined by three international documents: the Budapest Open Access Initiative (February 2002) , the BetThe OA movement in Croatia has been embraced and supported by librarians, scientists, publishers, and government bodies. In 2004, Croatian Information and Documentation Society set up a working group to promote OA movement and launched a project called OASI – Open Access to Scientific Information. A number of Croatian scientific journals immediately accepted the initiative and started to publish OA articles on their websites. The online platform for local journals, named Hrčak, turned out to be one of the most successful national projects, comprising more than 350 fully or partially OA journals in 2014 . In 2010Institutional repository (IR) is an online archive that captures and preserves works created by members of an institution, providing access to them in digital form ,17. The 1) greater visibility of the scholarly work, increasing the impact and prestige of the authors and their institution in the scientific community,2) support to the scientific and educational process in the institution,3) public insight into the institutional intellectual output, also important to the funding bodies or sponsors, and4) cost reduction in acquisition of scientific literature -23.IR is an important part of the modern scientific and academic institutions’ digital infrastructure. The current list of the Directory of Open Access Repositories (Open Doar) includes 2525 institutional repositories , four thBuilding and maintaining an IR requires similar skills and abilities as building and maintaining a library collection, so it is not surprising that initiators and administrators in 80% of IRs are libraries .In the early 2005, the Central Medical Library (CML) affiliated to the University of Zagreb School of Medicine, launched a project to design and develop an IR with the following main goals:1) capturing institutional publication production, enhancing its accessibility, visibility, and distribution,2) facilitating scientific communication between scientists and students in the field of medicine.University of Zagreb Medical School Repository  fulfils 1) institutional affiliation,2) scholarly content ,3) cumulative nature and long-term preservation,4) open access to all content,5) interoperability supported by an open source software (EPrints)  and the Currently, the repository contains 1350 items, 963 of which are articles, 374 PhD theses, 1 book, 6 book chapters, and 6 conference communications, covering the period from 2003 onwards.IRs are designed as networking platforms, where authors usually self-archive their works. However, authors are not prone to self-archiving, even when it is mandatory ,28. TherPhD theses comprise 28% of the repository's content, and it is the single access point to their full-text versions. The University of Zagreb has still not implemented the OA policy and postgraduate students are not required to archive their theses. Therefore, the CML has an important role in encouraging them to permit their depositing to IR. The CML strictly respects students' intellectual property rights. When submitting a thesis manuscript to the School’s administration the students fill out a permission form and decide whether they want to deposit their work immediately or one year after they obtain a doctor’s degree, or whether they refuse to give permission. From 2003 to 2013, 657 students obtained a PhD and 56.9% (374/657) granted their permission to deposit the thesis to IR.The success of an IR depends on the authors’ willingness to archive their works. Authors’ lack of familiarity with the concept of open access and worrying about copyright issues may be a major barrier to IR development. Therefore, it is necessary to continually promote the purpose and advantages of archiving in a repository. In 2013, the University of Zagreb Medical School Repository was accessed 132 000 times (monthly access between 9000 and 13 000 times). The users mostly searched for PhD theses. These results are consistent with other studies . In contCroatian Medical Journal and later through its IR (The University of Zagreb School of Medicine has been supporting OA since 1996, first through the h its IR . When thh its IR . Such wih its IR . This im


Open access journals provide an opportunity to read quality research articles through internet across the world. Concern has been shown as to the standard of articles published in open access journals and their peer review process but same has been refuted by a study of Björk and Solomon.[1] They have concluded that scientific impact of open access journal is now approaching that of subscription journals.In paediatric surgery, the impact of open access journals has not been evaluated presently but hopefully as they receive impact factor in future, this issue shall be addressed. There is encouraging trend towards addition of open access journals of paediatric surgery to international databases which in itself reflects quality of such publications. But unfortunately, most of the open access journals originate from developing countries. Few of these are “Electronic-only” publications. This takes care of cost of publication and therefore become economical and viable option on the longer run. The foremost issue is why journals from technologically advanced countries published by giants in the field of publications still charging huge amount both from the contributors as well as readers. The cost is huge not within the reach of researchers, students, residents etc from developing countries. This amounts to putting hurdles for researchers from developing world where the need of research is most. This gap is now being filled by open access journals and the number of manuscripts being sent to them and their quality has visibly improved. Same trend is apparent in our APSP Journal of Case Reports (AJCR). This is indexed with international databases and we hope to get impact factor soon. We have no conflict of interest as this is an official journal of The Association of Paediatric Surgeons of Pakistan (APSP). There are no subscription and publications charges thus researchers are encouraged to send their quality manuscripts for publication to this journal. Our peer review system further ensures that all submissions are seen by experts in the field to improve standard of the manuscript. We are thankful to all of our contributors and reviewers for their hard work.Source of Support: NilConflict of Interest: None declared


James Heilman considers how much good could result from providing clinicians with better, freer access to the information they need to do their work. Currently no open access point-of-care (POC) medical summary aimed at a professional audience exists.Some nonprofit and multiple professional, for-profit POC medical summaries are frequently accessed by clinicians and policymakers.Efforts to create open access POC summaries have been stymied by the difficulty of attracting high-quality contributors.The open access medical publishing community can create this resource with engaged donors, crowd-sourcing, and technology.PLOS ONE became the world's single largest journal (by number of articles) only four years after it was founded and has since increased in volume nearly 5-fold  almost 90% of academic medical centers in the United States rely on UpToDate to provide the best care.” The word “rely” is a curious one, but usage statistics support the idea that health care providers find UpToDate helpful, with more than 23 million topic views logged each month . The comWhile the value of these tools cannot be assessed by observation or anecdote alone, it is clear that clinicians seek out, use, and personally pay for them. The wider world is also interested in health care content. Google states that one in twenty searches is for health care information . AdditioGiven the rise of OA scientific publishing, why have we not seen similar developments making the world’s medical knowledge freely available in a constantly updated and intuitively accessible format ready at the point of care? There have been attempts. But they serve not only as examples that such databases are desired but also that creating them is difficult.In 2009, Medpedia was formed with venture capital, and their website stated they had the support of top universities, including Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, and the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health . MedpediIn medicine, the one web-based, crowdsourced project that seems to have had a degree of success is Wikipedia . IronicaAn open access professional database would need open access professional content. Such a database could be created “de novo,” it could be developed from currently available open content, or it could be constructed by releasing what is currently closed-source content under open licenses. Even if a benefactor with deep pockets were willing to buy UpToDate or DynaMed and make its content freely available as a starting point, mechanisms to regularly update the content remain essential.Creating entirely new content is an enormous undertaking, but with the support of OA publishing and the wider medical community, it may be possible. UpToDate has around 10,000 topics , while eThere is a great deal of existing open access content that could be adapted to be more professional and clinically useful. This includes content from Wikipedia, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, for example, has open access content spread across at least 27 different institutional websites. Even finding the correct website is, therefore, a challenge when searching for the topic one is looking for. Additional material could come from other organizations if they could be convinced to release content more openly; these might include the World Health Organization, National Health Services in the United Kingdom, and Health Canada. The Bulletin of the World Health Organization began using an open license in July of 2014. Medication-related information could possibly come from organizations such as the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists or the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, which already produce the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Drug Information and British National Formulary, respectively.A team of editors would then give the final product a consistent style, find appropriate peer review, and verify quality. How, though, should this team and the website by which the information was delivered be paid for?PLOS Medicine, do not contain literature-review–type articles (not to be confused with systematic reviews). Expecting authors to pay to write articles, as in a current open model for primary research, would not be realistic for reviews unless publication, as with research, also lead to career advancement.Expenses for a medical project such as this relate not just to platform development but also content creation, editing, production, and promotion. Recruiting quality content has proved a stumbling block for some previous efforts despite offering payment for written work. Unpaid content creation draws upon the established practice of many scientific journals; editors commonly expect experts to write review articles for free, with the joint rewards of increased visibility for their ideas and a new publication on their professional record. For an open access POC medical summary to attract quality content, it must likewise confer prestige or career advancement to its authors. Most open access journals, including Wikipedia has a surprisingly small community of contributors, perhaps partly because it lacks prestige among the academic community. If contributing to a global knowledge database came to be valued, in terms of prestige and career progression, contributors would compete for the right to help. Once the reputation of such a database became established, it would be self-reinforcing, encouraging ever more competition to contribute, with resulting increases in quality and prestige for those involved. There would also be something honourable about spending part of one's career on such an effort.Wikipedia’s funding model relies almost entirely on donations from readers. This is relatively effective, even given the small percentage who contribute, as nearly half a billion individuals use the site each month. About 2 million people donated an average of US$15, mostly during a one-month period last year. Still, Wikipedia runs on a low budget of less than US$50 million a year, as compared to annual revenues of US$4.7 billion for the parent company of UpToDate  and US$2The NIH currently pays for licenses to use some material for their medical encyclopedias. Even though hosted on a .gov website, it is not in the public domain or under an open license. The content is basic, containing no inline references, and is too simple to be useful to a professional.The World Health Organization (WHO) and National Health Services (NHS) have much high-quality material that can be freely viewed online, but very little of it is under an open license. The WHO material, additionally is often not in a format that is easily viewed, with much of their content in large, image-laden PDFs that are slow to load even for those with excellent internet connections. While the WHO’s policy on open access is now supporting greater availability of the material it produces, it has not yet gone so far as to make all of its content available under an open access license, such that others can build upon it. Additionally the organization occasionally uses the term “open access” when they appear to mean “free access” . One wouThe US federal government has been releasing much of what they produce into the public domain since 1895 . The benProblematic among those who do use open licenses is that there is not just one creative commons (CC) or open license, but many exist and they are often incompatible or only compatible in one direction. Qualifiers of open licenses include “by attribution” (BY), “share-alike” (SA), “non-commercial” (NC), and “no-derivatives” (ND). Many NGOs create content under CC BY SA NC licenses that are not usable within a CC BY or CC BY SA source. If such acronyms seem confusingly bad reasons for not sharing knowledge that could improve global health, so they should. Efforts at Wikipedia to improve reliability included efforts to work more closely with PLOS and BMJ Open, but these efforts faced copyright issues. A common license for open access journals is CC BY, while Wikipedia’s content is under an incompatible CC BY SA. Thus, Wikipedia content cannot be published by these journals under their usual license. Neither PLOS, BMJ Open, nor Wikipedia were able to find a way to align their licenses. These licensing issues make it difficult for those who are working towards the same goal of “health information for all” to collaborate. The NC license faces the additional issue that what defines a non-commercial use is not clear. For example, while many view education as non-commercial, students pay to attend university, and professors make a living teaching and doing research.Getting access is key. Simply putting content up on the Internet is not enough—many people, including many health care providers in low- and middle-income countries, do not have easy or inexpensive access to the Internet. Most people, however, do have access to cell phones. The Wikimedia Foundation has agreements with cell phone companies to provide Wikipedia without data charges in low- and middle-income countries. As of May 2015, 400 million people in low- and middle-income countries have free access to Wikipedia without data charges through these programs. This suggests a model for widely disseminating a clinical knowledge database. Loading health content on phone systems before they are shipped may be another option and is one Wikipedia is currently pursuing.The success of PubMed Central and the many open access journals in making medical knowledge openly available to researchers has been immense. Nothing similar has yet been done for clinicians. Our immediate goal should be to provide accessible, high-quality medical information that is easily searchable and usable at the point of care . Using fEstablished medical publishers work to engage clinicians, academics, and government agencies in an effort to generate high-quality, open access POC summaries. Open access summaries could initially be developed via commissions from high-impact journals. Once a database of summaries is established, prestige will reinforce content contribution. Experts can follow their conscientious desire to promote global health while benefiting professionally.Open access journals would need to agree on a consistent style and compatible license. Funders of research such as the NIH and NHS could put money towards these efforts and benefit from reuse of the materials on their own websites.Open Medicine in October of 2014 [This is already happening to a limited extent in a slightly different format, with the first Wikipedia article formally published following peer review in the journal  of 2014 . Cancer A medium-sized not-for-profit could be set up and funded through grants, donations, and goodwill. Membership would come with expectation of openness. This would hopefully push some organizations to reconsider their position and become more serious about the importance of open licensing.Create and manage a MediaWiki website editable only by approved users. Build up a collaboration of partners. Develop a manual of style and outlines. Petition partners to fill in portions with stipends and authorship as rewards. Use both internal and external peer review. Encourage content from Wikipedia and inclusion into Wikipedia to expand audience. Hire programmers to manage automated scripts and develop the underlying software to better fit the needs of the site.Build from the ground up, create a new website and software, hire authors, hire translators, convince cell phone companies to allow free use, and raise capital. Would require convincing major funders to invest large amount yearly and in perpetuity. Would require hundreds of employees to manage all aspect of a large publishing and distribution house.Such a database is not a small goal, but it is a worthy one. That medical decisions are made without timely access to the existing evidence base, and that this occurs in a world which recognises the importance of open access to scientific knowledge, should not be allowed to continue. An opportunity exists for governments, NGOs, IGOs, and philanthropists to reduce the global burden of disease simply by working together to make existing medical knowledge easily, freely, and usefully available.


The lack of formal training programs for peer reviewers places the scientific quality of biomedical publications at risk, as the introduction of ‘hidden’ bias may not be easily recognized by the reader. The exponential increase in the number of manuscripts submitted for publication worldwide, estimated in the millions annually, overburdens the capability of available qualified referees. Indeed, the workload imposed on individual reviewers appears to be reaching a ‘breaking point’ that may no longer be sustainable. Some journals have made efforts to improve peer review via structured guidelines, courses for referees, and employing biostatisticians to ensure appropriate study design and analyses. Further strategies designed to incentivize and reward peer review work include journals providing continuing medical education (CME) credits to individual referees by defined criteria for timely and high-quality evaluations. Alternative options to supplement the current peer review process consist of ‘post-publication peer review,’ ‘decoupled peer review,’ ‘collaborative peer review,’ and ‘portable peer review’. This article outlines the shortcomings and flaws in the current peer review system and discusses new innovative options on the horizon.http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/s12916-014-0128-z.pdf.See related article: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12916-014-0179-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BMC Medicine [“Treatment decisions are based on evidence which is itself determined by a system for which there is no evidence of effectiveness” [iveness” .We read with enthusiasm the recent opinion article by Jigisha Patel in Medicine . Dr. PatMedicine . The lacMedicine . Once puMedicine . This noAlthough the quality of evidence-based medicine (EBM) has evolved over the years with the provision of defined uniform criteria for reporting of trials  statement ) and of The exponential increase in the number of manuscripts submitted for publication worldwide overburden the capability of available qualified referees to keep up with reviewing requests and to ensure timeliness and quality of their respective evaluations. In 2006, the estimated number of published peer-reviewed articles reached 1.4 million per year [The ever-increasing competitiveness in research (“publish or perish”) in these current times of limited grant funding opportunities incentivizes researchers to ‘fragment’ results from a single study into multiple publications, or to publish identical data sets redundantly . This efThe burden placed on peer reviewers to assess an increasing number of submitted manuscripts – a large proportion of which are characterized by questionable scientific quality – appears to be reaching a ‘breaking point’ that is no longer sustainable. Increasing numbers of reports on unethical research conduct, including the publication of fraudulent and fabricated data and of plagiarized or redundant publications, represent an additional dilemma for editors and reviewers -9. SelecHow are peer reviewers supposed to cope with the sheer number of increasing reviewing requests and assignments?How are untrained ‘lay’ referees expected to recognize and scrutinize flaws in study design, methodology, and the validity of interpretation of data?How are qualified ‘expert’ referees expected to recognize research misconduct and to stratify apparent ‘good papers’ from unethical submissions, including redundant publications and fabricated data?This raises the following questions:Patient Safety in Surgery [Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery [As editors of two peer-reviewed journals, representing both a model of open-access ( Surgery ) and a t Surgery ), we areExtrapolated to the court of law, would anybody accept a verdict from poorly qualified judges, purely based on the notion that those individuals were available to complete the assigned task? Clearly, the editorial process is highly responsible and challenging. Most editors spend a significant amount of time investigating the suitability of potential reviewers by matching their publication record to the topic of interest, and cross-checking potential referees for co-authorships with submitting authors. An editor’s ‘favorite’ type of reviewer comprises candidates who are immediately agreeable to accept requested assignments and who return a high-quality and comprehensive evaluation before expiration of the deadline. Despite diligent scrutiny to the process, as editors, we frequently remain uncertain as to the true qualifications of the assigned individual referees.In a perfect world, the ideal peer reviewer should constitute an active scientist working in the same subspecialty ‘niche’ of research matching the topic of the submitted paper, but should not have any current collaboration or professional liaison with the submitting authors, in order to avoid a conflict of interest. On the other hand, such expert ‘peers’ may easily be direct competitors for grant awards in the same field of research. This bias could provide the root cause of unjustified adverse reports leading to rejection of a submitted paper, or to a significant delay in publication by requesting additional cumbersome experiments. This type of ‘hidden’ conflict of interest may not be detectable by a journal’s managing editors.New York Times described a peer review fraud scheme run by a researcher in Taiwan, which led to a journal’s retraction of 60 publications [Recent worrisome reports describe a new pattern of peer review fraud, by which submitting authors falsify the contact information of suggested referees, with the goal of diverting the peer review request to their own email account under a falsified name. A recent report in the ications . The uncications . As mostper se as an outdated scientific tenet, in answer to the annual question of 2014 “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?” [In light of all the shortcomings related to the current peer review process and its impact on the quality and practice of EBM, many critical voices have questioned the validity and sustainability of our current approach to scientific publishing ,3,16,17.rement?” ,19.Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery revealed that 42% of rejected papers were readily published in open-access journals within an average of 10 months after rejection . The interpretation of this finding is ambiguous. On the one hand, it is very possible that the scrutiny of the initial peer review process will help improve the overall quality of a rejected paper after revision, and thus make it more appealing and suitable for publication in a second-tier target journal. On the other hand, some open-access online journals appear to commission articles by a purely business incentive, without tribute to scientific merit and quality of research.A recent in-house editorial analysis in 2012 to 2013 on the ‘fate’ of rejected manuscripts with the Provocatively speaking, many of the new generation open-access journals may tend to accept a lower threshold of peer review quality, or imply that in-house editorial decision-making is reflective of formal ‘peer review’ as a trade-off to sustain their financial viability . This isJournal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery 1) selects reviewers based on their publication record; 2) assigns reviewers based on a list of those considered experts in the topic; 3) provides continuing medical education (CME) credits for high-quality reviews and timeliness of completion; 4) provides formal annual education sessions on how to conduct peer review; and 5) employs a MD/PhD biostatistician to review all provisionally accepted manuscripts. The Journal furthermore provides uniform guidelines for reviewers  score, which is based on defined objective metrics including the overall number of review cycles. PRE score is designed to measure the level of quality of peer review under the assumption that a more engaged peer review process will result in a higher quality final publication. Additional new concepts that have been recently advocated as alternatives include ‘post-publication peer review’ , ‘collaborative peer review’ , and ‘decoupled peer review’ [Despite the negative headlines and acknowledged deficiencies in the system, there have been significant efforts to improve the quality of the current modality of biomedical peer review. For example, the  review’ .In summary, we applaud Dr. Patel’s important contribution, which identifies the multiple shortcomings of the current peer review process for biomedical publishing, and offers specific pertinent solutions to improve the system . It is u