Shaukat Ali Jawaid
Policies being pursued by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan is not only promoting Gift authorship and Predatory Journals but also creating lot of problems for the healthcare professionals, faculty members who are now faced with a dilemma after publishing their manuscripts in sub-standard biomedical journals recognized by the HEC.
Peer review enjoys a central role in standard of biomedical journals. Failure to follow a proper peer review system by some journals was the main reason that some of these journals were not recognized by the Journals Committee of Pakistan Medial & Dental Council in 2018. However, when the PM&DC was dissolved and replaced with Pakistan Medical Commission which left the journal recognition to HEC, these journals continued to enjoy freedom to trap the faculty members and published their manuscripts at times it is alleged charging huge publication charges. Hundreds of faculty members got promoted based on these publications but since these journals again failed to get recognition from PM&DC, it has created serious problems for these faculty members which has also affected the standard of teaching and training of future healthcare professionals.
Quality of peer review may vary from journal to journal and depend on the quality of their peer reviewers as it is extremely difficult to find good reviews and there is always room for further improvement. However, failure to follow a proper peer review system is not acceptable. Since these faculty members themselves are not exposed to the standards of scientific writing, how they can teach and train their undergraduate and postgraduate students. Unfortunately, HEC itself has no one with a medical background in a decision making positon who is fully familiar with the concept of medical journalism which is a combination of art and science. Majority of the members of the journals committee, it is said, are not fully conversant with editing and publication of journals, ICMJE Guidelines on Authorship, Committee on Publication Ethics Guidelines on publication ethics and how to handle scientific misconduct.
Prof.Maj Gen. Muhammad Aslam former Vice Chancellor of University of Health Sciences who had himself served as Editor of Pakistan Armed Forces Medical Journal (PAFMJ) and is also currently Vice President at Large of Eastern Mediterranean Association of Medical Editors (EMAME) is fully aware of all this. He was named as Chairperson of the Journals Committee by HEC but since majority of the members have no medical background, he has so far failed to convince them to take rational decisions while evaluating the biomedical journals, despite his best efforts.
Membership of Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) coverage by important indexes and databases like PubMed or Medline, Impact Factor by Clarivate, PubMed Central, Scopus are some of the important parameters for evaluation and recognition of medical journals. All those journals which enjoy coverage in these should not pose any problem for evaluation and recognition by HEC. However, the HEC tin- gods keep on following some strange logic, parameters and also keep on shifting the category of even those journals which enjoy Impact Factor for the last many years. They are known to follow a strict peer review system, discourage gift authorship and follow professional ethics taking care of scientific misconduct but the HEC has its own way of looking at things. It is harming the national interests but they are least bothered. When the journal which they had been patronizing through recognition are removed from the important Indexing agencies and databases and the news is splashed all over the world bringing lot of bad name to Pakistan, it is the HEC which should take credit for all this.
While looking at the historical background when HEC started enlisting the journals, it asked the journals to fill up the Form it had designed on the HJRS. Unfortunately, it started with Quarterly publications and had no provision of monthly or bimonthly publications. Unless one fills up this frequency column, one could not move forward. When it was pointed out to the HEC and they were asked to make necessary changes in the Registration Form, the message we got was that “The competent authority has decided that there can be no change in the Form”. When they were told that frequency refers to the publication as per their declaration and how a monthly or bimonthly journal could register itself as quarterly publication, they realize their mistake and agreed to make the necessary changes.
Yet in another column the editors were asked to provide information as to how many manuscripts they received every month, how many of them were accepted and how many were rejected. Little did they know that it takes at least six to eight months to process a manuscript going through initial screening, editor’s triage, internal review, plagiarism check, formatting, external review, revision by authors responding to reviewer’s comments and suggestions before it is accepted for publication. Since the HEC staff responsible for evaluation and recognition had never edited or published a journal, it is beyond their expertize to realize all this. They were told that one can give you the figures on annual basis and not monthly.
In yet another instance, the HEC organized a training session for the editors at Karachi. The speaker they had selected had no idea about editing and publishing, the problems the editors face hence how she was expected to talk about their solution. The facilitator made a mess of all this. In fact, it was considered an insult to the intelligence of editors who have spent decades in the field of medical journalism for whom there were nothing in this training session. Some of the participants did protest at this and we ourselves published an Editorial highlighting all this.1
Again two years ago we received a communication addressed to Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences conveying that this journal has not been recognized because it does not enjoy Impact Factor, is neither indexed in PubMed or PubMed Central or Scopus despite the fact that our journal was covered in both these for the last many years. Detailed scrutiny revealed that the letter was in fact meant to be sent to Pakistan Journal of Media Sciences but by mistake it was posted to Pakistan Journal of Medial Sciences as the staff failed to differentiate between Media and Medical.
Pakistan Journal of Medical Silences which commenced publication in 1984 today attracts over four hundred scientific manuscripts for publication from over fifty countries of the world. We have a special focus on South East Asia and Asia Pacific. It enjoys the highest Impact Factor among the biomedical journals published from Pakistan for the last ten years. Last year our IF was 2.2 but this year since Clarivate merged the medical and social science journals, our IF decreased like all other major journals and it is 1.2. We are covered by Scopus another important database. Our current Cite Score for the Year 2023 is 4.1. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences is also the only medical journal from Pakistan which enjoys Q2 ranking as per Journal Citation Report released by Clarivate in June 2024.
Hence, we are least bothered about the ranking the HEC grants to us. We are determined to provide a platform to researchers from Pakistan to publish their research work in Impact Factor Journal at a highly subsidized publication charges and processing fee and we compensate it from funds generated from authors from overseas. We are grateful to our valuable reviewers who have helped us achieve all this. At the same time we pray that May Allah Pak show the HEC official the right path so that they start taking rational decisions looking at the ground realities and the environment in which we have to work. The ideal solution could be a joint committee of HEC and Pakistan Medical & Dental Council for evaluation and recognition of medical journals which it is learnt has been discussed but so far no decision has been taken.
REFERENCE
- Jawaid SA, Jawaid M. Revised Publication Policies by Higher Education Commission for Health Science Journals. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(2):1-3. doi: 10.12669/pjms.36.2.2133.
