The Forces Library
The Trouble With Medical Journals | Richard Smith
ISBN: 1853156736; ISBN-13: 978-1853156731
Published By: Royal Society of Medicine Press
Available From: This book is available from Amazon.com.
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It is a turbulent time for STM publishing. With moves towards open access to scientific literature, the future of medical journals is uncertain and unpredictable. It is the only book of its kind to address this problematic issue.
Richard Smith, a previous editor of the British Medical Journal for twenty five years, and one of the most influential people within medical journals and medicine, gives a compelling picture of medical publishing. Drawn from the author’s own extensive and unrivalled experience in medical publishing, Smith provides a refreshingly honest analysis of current and future trends in journal publishing including peer review, ethics in medical publishing, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry as well as that of the mass media, and the risk that money can cloud objectivity in publishing.
Full of personal anecdotes and amusing tales, this is a book for everyone, from researcher to patient, author to publisher and editor to reader. The controversial and highly topical nature of this book will make uncomfortable reading for publishers, researchers, funding bodies and pharmaceutical companies alike, making this a useful resource for anyone with an interest in medicine or medical journals.
Topics covered include: Libel and medical journals; Patients and medical journals; Medical journals and the mass media; Medical journals and pharmaceutical companies: uneasy bedfellows; Editorial independence; misconduct; and accountability; Ethical support and accountability for journals; Peer review: a flawed process and Conflicts of interest: how money clouds objectivity.
This is a unique offering by the former BMJ editor — challenging, comprehensive, and controversial. This must be the most controversial medical book of the 21st Century
-- John Illman, MJA News
I found the section on the economics of biomedical publishing to be the most interesting. Smith cites some remarkable data. The dominant biomedical publisher, Reed Elsevier, had profits of approximately 2 billion dollars with an impressively high margin. The largest fraction of these profits come from biomedical publishing. Smith points out the actually stunningly obvious reasons for these remarkable figures. The raw material of journals is submitted manuscripts for which journals have to pay nothing. Most journals are run by volunteer editors and editorial boards. From a publisher's point of view, this is a remarkably low overhead business model.
Smith points also to an almost complete lack of competition, a really impressive example of market failure. Smith has a thoughtful discussion of alternatives, which may come to fruition with some of the ongoing open publishing initiatives.
-- R. Albin
Medical journals have become "creatures of the drug industry" rife with fraudulent research and packed with articles ghost-written by pharmaceutical companies, an ex British Medical Journal editor has claimed.
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"Public health" is big business. I know that now, but for the longest time — and probably in the company of millions — I naïvely thought that this industry cared about my health. I was a fool: I know that now, too.
-- Gian Turci, FORCES International