15th Conference on Professional Information Resources

Autor: Milan Špála, Charles University - 1st Medical Faculty, Czech Republic

Fulltext

Abstract:

“Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals – URM” initiated by “The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors – ICMJE” were proposed in 1978 and published in 1979. An international effort on standardizing the contents and the structure of scientific biomedical journals accomplished its goal after a ten-year period of preparatory activities of outstanding editors of the main biomedical journals (British Medical Journal – editor Stephen Lock, and Annals of Internal Medicine - editor Edward J. Huth). Since 1979, the main trends in standardization have gradually been shifting from formal aspects (text structure, abbreviations, formal unification of references) to ethical issues, including legal impacts. The authorship criteria and the definition of contributorship have been repeatedly formulated as well.

These steps were prepared and gradually implemented by the ICMJE which has a long-term tradition in this field. The new versions of URM were soon signed by many European, American and Scandinavian journals. The new principles of publishing soon earned an excellent international reputation. The primary formal aspects regarding avoiding conflicts of interest and the role of advertising were followed by new ones. Duplicate and secondary publications were precisely defined, as well as publishing of simple errors, fraudulent or suspicious data. Strictness in these issues was uncompromising and represented the key moment for a broad international acceptance of these new principles, which were also considered as new possible criteria for the evaluation of research publications. In URM, the statement on editorial freedom was also published, and was later expanded by the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). The development and clear definition of “peer review” were also very valuable. This question is now regularly discussed at world congresses on “Peer Review and Biomedical Publication”, organised by the American Medical Association (the 6th Congress will be held in Vancouver, in September, 2009). Both, peer reviewing and the role of the peer reviewer are now well defined and represent a consistent principle in the publishing system and a reliable criterion for the evaluation of research quality as well.
Besides the above mentioned institutions many others play an important role in publishing and science evaluation. For example, the Association of Learned And Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) was established in 1972 to shape the future of learned and professional publishing. The Council of Biology Editors (CBE) was founded in 1957 jointly by the National Science Foundation and the American Institute of Biological Sciences. The CBE was in 2000 renamed the Council of Science Editors (CSE) and publishes “The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, And Publishers” (2006, 7th ed.). The European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) was founded in 1989 by a small group of professional biomedical communicators with academic, industrial and journalistic affiliations with the aim to promote standards of excellence in medical writing by furthering the professional development of members and increasing the awareness of medical writing throughout Europe. Associations with similar missions function not only in biomedicine, but also in biological and social sciences and humanities. It is in full agreement with the principles of citation indexes created in the sixties by E. Garfield (the Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia – Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index).
It is obvious that in addition to the dominant contribution of bibliometrics and scientometrics, also journalology (S. Lock, 1960) and an extremely creative cooperation between eminent authors and editors have elevated contemporary publication technology and ethics to a level which offers exact criteria suitable for the evaluation of research results. Psychosocial processes included in all of the above mentioned disciplines and institutions play a basic role in the evaluation of publication activities of authors and thus they also play a role in spreading their ideas and results in the communication science network.

About author:

Assotiatied professor of Pathophysiology at Charles University in Prague.

Author: Herbert Van de Sompel, Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA

Author: Petr Ráb, Academy Council, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Co-authors:

Ivana Laiblová Kadlecová, Academy of Sciences Library, Czech Republic

Author: Martin Matějka, Government Council, Office of the Government Council for Research and Developement, Czech Republic

Author: Věra Kroftová, Agrotest fyto, Ltd., Czech Republic

Author: Aleš Žák, Charles University in Prague - 1st Medical Faculty, Czech Republic

Co-authors:

Hana Skálová, Jana Patočková, Marek Vecka - Charles University in Prague - 1st Medical Faculty, Czech Republic

Author: Jana Ilavská, Comenius University in Bratislava - Academic Library, Slovak Republic