PubMed, run by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), is a first-class resource that lists some 30,000 biomedical journals with over 37 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. It indexes about 1.8 million articles a year.

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With such an abundance of articles, and as science is cumulative, you would have thought we would have reached the nub of scientific research: understanding how the universe works, its laws, where we come from, and why we exist.

Unfortunately, we are some way off reaching that point. Some “scientists” seem to lack basic understanding, like the difference between a disease and a syndrome—others do not understand the difference in function between a trial and a case-control study to answer a clinical question. Researchers often use the wrong techniques, misreport or misinterpret their results, and many papers are misleading because of methodological shortcomings. 

We have already reported how editorial peer review is touted as the mark of scientific scrutiny, but evidence of its effects is lacking. Editors' use of it as an insurance policy has allowed poor science and censorship to proliferate. Increasingly, the journals have been lost in commercialism and ideology.

During the Covid pandemic, several high-profile editors-in-chief chose to take a political pro-interventional stance, failing to take a balanced view and over promoting flip-floppers, stagazers, overnight experts, charlatan influencers and authoritarians. Impartiality should be the hallmark of credible academic journals- it isn’t.

We have also reported what a nice little earner editing is for some.

With flourishing reprint, brand and conference businesses.

The topic of journal branding and marketing is quite complex, but even a couple of dishevelled old geezers like us know a trick or two about raising a journal's impact factor (IF). The IF, first conceived by Eugene (Gene) Garfield, was not meant to be what it is now: a mark of importance, or academic success.

Garfield created the IF so that librarians of big institutions with tight budgets (even then) could subscribe to journals of the utmost interest to a broad selection of healthcare workers in their institution. But the IF became a marketing vehicle, and then came corporate subscriptions and subscription bundles. These are made up of “titles” and are an amazing idea for making even more money. Let’s say you are interested in titles A and E. Bundling subscriptions give you access to A and E plus the rest of the alphabet. Like an astute door-to-door salesman - they sell you everything you want and most of what you do not want. Brilliant!

One of our active subscribers was invited to contribute to the “Journal of Important Results” (an old geezer joke anonymisation). They are running a theme issue on Covid 

He was considering writing something on mortality and responded positively to the invite. This is what he got back:

“Thank you for your inquiry and your interest in joining our COVID-19 theme issue.

Regarding publication fees, they are as follows:

• Individual rate: $3,250

• Institutional rate: $4,400

• Developing country rate: $1,499

Since your paper is currently a working paper and not yet published in another journal, you are welcome to submit it for consideration in our special issue.”

It warms the cockles of our hearts to see such willingness to help a researcher publish their stuff: genuinely generous.

The outrageous costs would deter most folk.  TTE subscriptions cost, on average, 15 Cents a post, as we are writing for the public or those interested in what we have to say. 

Our question is simple: Who can afford the cash needed to publish an article in the Journal of Very Important Results?

This post was written by two clueless old geezers who no longer do peer reviews.