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PM&DC Decision to give credit to manuscripts published in predatory journals rings an alarm bell

World will lose faith in regulatory bodies in Pakistan and it may have serious consequences for the country Members of Journals Evaluation Committee in PM&DC, HEC should be made responsible as their decisions can bring bad name to Pakistan

WHO voices concern at growth of Predatory Journals in India, Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Medical & Dental Council in its wisdom has decided to give credit to the manuscripts published in one of the predatory journals prior to its de- recognition i.e. 31st January 2024. A notification to this effect has been issued by the Registrar on November 13th stating that the decision was taken in the 11th Council meeting of PM & DC held on October 22nd 2024. In the meantime, World Health Organization has voiced concern at the growth of predatory journals from India and Pakistan and is reported to be seriously looking at the situation.

The decision of PM &DC in this context raises eyebrows as no valid reason is provided to the public at large and medical community in particular for this position. This in fact, has created a mistrust at the functioning of a regulatory body, the main function of which is to pursuit a high ethical and scientific standard in context of healthcare education, research and quality services to the masses. It appears that a vast majority of faculty members got their papers published in the said journal by paying a huge amount of money in order to get quick publication without following the standard editorial processes including a peer review. It may be mentioned here that there are quite a few other predatory journals most of which are published from Punjab and a few from KPK which do not have any proper peer review system, indulge in unethical publication practices and are thriving unchecked.
It will not be inappropriate to relate this state of affair to the incompetent members of the regulatory bodies in Pakistan who are entrusted to monitor such irregularities. These predatory journals appear to enjoy the patronage of some of the senior healthcare professionals who lobby on their behalf with regulatory bodies, as well as Ministry of Health and others influential persons in the power corridor.

Members of the Journals Evaluation Committees, both in the PM & DC as well as the Higher Education Commission should be held accountable. PM & DC, developed an organized system of evaluation of the medical journals by getting an input from the renowned editors who represent Pakistan at international fora like WAME, EMAME of WHO, and COPE. These independent members through a rigorous process of evaluation have not approved / renewed many journals when they applied for recognition in 2018. Unfortunately, when the PM & DC was dissolved and replaced with Pakistan Medical Commission, it transferred the responsibilities of the recognition of medical journals to HEC and this has resulted in the deterioration of the evaluation processes.

The abolition of HJRS of HEC is a stark example. The damage done during those four years before the PM & DC was revived may take decades to regain its trust amongst the medical community and editors. The HEC guidelines clearly state that each manuscript before publication must be reviewed by at least two experts. However, none of the predatory journals followed this. This was not picked up by the concerned members of HEC journal evaluation committee and recognition status was granted. When these journals applied for recognition to PM & DC, they were asked to provide peer review reports of the manuscripts they have published. However, the same could not be answered satisfactorily.

Peer review, is an extremely important process of publication to ensure quality of the manuscripts and thus standard of the journals. PM & DC in its guidelines has a very transparent and effective system in place and during the last year it evaluated over ninety journals. Some of them were not recommended for recognition and all these journals were provided detailed observations. They were asked to rectify and then reapply as PM & DC does not wish to close any journal but to act as a facilitator so that we can have more good quality standard medical journals where the researches could publish their manuscripts. Peer review takes time and most often the authors have to wait for four to six or even up to eight months to get their papers published.

All Impact Factor journals have a long waiting period. PAME in collaboration with UHS and CPSP has been training Editors since 2019, editors of journals already being published were enrolled in the first two batches with the result that now the number of Impact Factor Journals in Pakistan has increased from three to Twelve. However, those running these predatory journals are not interested to improve their functioning and continue to trap faculty members who are eager to get their papers published quickly by paying huge amounts. These authors are not at all innocent and they know all this and wish to bypass the peer review practiced by standard journals. Hundreds of faculty members have got promoted by publishing their papers in these predatory journals and it will have an adverse effect as teaching, training which will also suffer.

Since these faculty members are themselves not well trained, they won’t be able to train the undergraduate and postgraduate students. It was with great difficulty that PM & DC through the efforts of many friends and well-wishers of Paksitan had been successful to get recognition from World Federation of Medical Education but such ill-advised politically motivated decisions will cost us very dearly. We already have many enemies who will exploit such decisions. Supported by some senior healthcare professionals who keep on lobbying with regulatory bodies and government functionaries just to please their friends entirely based on politically motivated decisions needs to be condemned. These elements also needs to be exposed.

Last year one of the Directors of WHO in Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office had raised concern at the growth of predatory journals in Pakistan as well. Again while participating in a Webinar few months ago he raised this issue. However, he was assured that the Journals Evaluation Committee in the PM & DC is very careful having evolved a transparent system of evaluation, that is why some of these journals have failed to get recognition. The HEC has recognized many of these predatory journals for which an internal audit must be done. It is suggested that let there be a combined committee of PM & DC and HEC to evaluate and recognize the medical journals. However, the same is not yet materialized.

In the meantime sale and purchase of authorship is flourishing in the country. It is openly advertised on the social media with charges mentioned for First, Second, Third and Fourth author and so on. Since none of them has ever been punished, they continue to get away with that. A senior official in WHO commenting on the prevailing situation in Pakistan has stated that “Pakistan needs to eradicate the CRIMINAL PUBLICATIONS (I don’t use the word Unethical here, as these are criminal publication practices) from Pakistani medical journals and have the mechanisms in place to punish those who are involved in these practices (this includes the editors of the journals, authors of articles and those who facilitate/encourage such criminal practices). Pakistan need to look into the whole publication system, the regulatory role of the PM & DC and HEC, the legal framework, identify regulatory and legal gaps that encourage criminals to promote such practices. Once legal and regulatory gaps are covered, Pakistan need to strengthen the technical capacity of PM & DC, develop its publication evaluation and monitoring system to ensure that all publications are ethical and legal. Rules should be in place and once the criminal practices are identified the culprits should be held accountable for their acts. If these goals are not achieved, ALL PAKISTANI JOURNALS and the regulatory bodies will lose their credibility he warned.”

It is still time that we avoid taking politically motivated decisions, uphold merit and also ensure that the whole system is transparent, otherwise it will be too late and may have serious consequences for the country. Federal Government and the Government of Punjab in particular from where most of these predatory journals are being published should wake up and take appropriate steps to deal with this menace.

1 COMMENT

  1. There are scientists/researchers (so called ) that advertise that they will get you a research article which will be published in the —– Journal provided they get paid. They claim that they have the research data which can be published in your name. This is a very scary and situation and is academic corruption. They mostly target junior and mid-level faculty in need of papers for promotion. Both PMDC and HEC must look into it

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