BHUBANESWAR: Influx of predatory journals, which promise lightning quick publication of research articles, has cast a dark shadow on medical education and profession.
Despite a detailed guideline by Medical Council of India (MCI) to guard against such journals, such publications have flourished taking advantage of an inadequate monitoring and review system against abuse by the doctor-teachers.
The journals flood the e-mail accounts of doctors and encourage submission of research papers. Most of these not only claim to possess MCI validation apart from indexing and impact factor, they also demand a fee to offer peer-reviewed publication in a span of three to seven days which is nothing short of ridiculous.
The fact is that genuine national and international science journals take anything between an year and two to publish a research article since it has to go through an extremely rigorous process of review. Sometimes, even after two years the submitted articles are rejected.
However, with the predatory and fake journals providing a quick-fix solution, doctors in medical colleges have found a short-cut to promotion as the Government looks the other way.When fake journals began spreading their tentacles three to four years ago, international research organisations sounded an alert. In September, 2015, MCI came out with a guideline on eligibility of research articles basing on which promotion to associate professors and professors would be carried out.
For promotion to associate professor, at least two research article publications during the assistant professor tenure is required. For promotion to professor and additional professor level, a cumulative of four research articles including two in the associate professor tenure is mandated as per MCI rules. In both cases, the publications have to be in Indexed journals and the doctors have to be either the first or corresponding author.
To circumvent the tedious process of getting an article reviewed and published, the predatory journals claim certain indexing as a badge of honour. Some of them even boast of an impact factor above five whereas reputed Indian journals like Indian Journal of Medical Research (IJMR), a peer-reviewed publication of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), has an impact factor of a little above 2 which points at the blatant lie the fake journals push about themselves.
It is not as if doctors are not aware because MCI guideline is clear that articles must be published in national and international specialty journals or journals of national and international societies which should be indexed in agencies specified in the list approved by MCI.
National research agencies like ICMR, sources said, permits a direct verification of published research articles during interviews itself.
In case of Odisha, Director of Medical Education and Training Dr PC Mohapatra said verification of research articles by the doctors seeking promotion is conducted by a committee headed by principals of the government medical colleges in the State. “So far, no discrepancy has come to our notice,” he claimed.