The dark side of academic research

A new study found several senior academic surgeons had published papers in what used to be termed “predatory journals.” The newer, gentler term is “solicited publishing,” but it defines the same pay-to-play, low quality publications.

Surgeons from the University of California, San Diego examined 110 emails sent to the senior author from 29 publishers during a six-week period and early 2017. Nearly all were requesting manuscript submissions. The 29 publishers represented 113 different surgery journals most of which had existed for two years or less. Only 12 were indexed in PubMed, and of the 9 that mentioned a self-reported impact factor, the median was 0.24 which means they had less than one citation per article in the last two years. The median publication fee for the 88 journals posting the information was $755.

Emails from the publishers contained a mean of 9.6 grammatical errors, possibly because more than half had addresses in foreign countries, and of those with US addresses, 30% were residential.

My blog cited in JAMA Surgery paper: Progress for bloggers

About a year and a half ago, I blogged that a medical student on Twitter used a blog post of mine as evidence. In January, the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia published an article I wrote under my pseudonym called “Why I blog and tweet.”

Last month, medical blogging took another step toward legitimacy. A JAMA Surgery Viewpoint formally cited my post critiquing the Finnish randomized trial of antibiotics versus surgery for the treatment of acute appendicitis.

Here is the first page with the portion of the piece discussing what I had written in the blog post.

Click on figure to enlarge.

Here is how citation appears in the JAMA Surgery article.

If you haven't read my entire post about the randomized trial, click here.

Last year I said this: “Journals may have to adapt and become more like blogs. In the future, medical information may be disseminated by blogs and comments rather than journal articles and letters to the editor.”

We have already seen prominent publications such as the New England Journal of Medicine starting online forums and the BMJ hosting blogs (at least 36 so far) and rapid responses to published papers.

The sea change in the way medical research is disseminated may be happening sooner than I thought.

Reaction to post on academia and social media

"Should social media accomplishments be recognized by academia?" a post of mine from October 4th, generated some lively discussion on Twitter.

Here are a few of the more interesting responses:

@ashishkjha Important question from @Skepticscalpel Should academia value impact on social media? Yes. And it's coming. Slowly.

@MartinSGaynor Science comes 1st, 2nd, 3rd.. MT @ashishkjha Important Q: @Skepticscalpel Shld academia value impact on social media?

@ashishkjha agree how to measure impact a key question. Eye balls can't be enough. But too important a question to ignore.

‏@DoctorTennyson Yes-I think social media has a role for #publichealth, #education, and fosters collaboration. More than obscure journals

@NirajGusani still you add value to your dept -how do/should they measure it?

‏@gorskon Heck, at @ScienceBasedMed, we get 1M page views a month, but I get no credit.

@gorskon I agree though. For the most part, social media harms, not helps, academic career.

Should social media accomplishments be recognized by academia?

In August, I posted this: "A paper of mine was published. Did anyone read it?"

A recent comment on it raised an interesting point. Dr. Christian Sinclair [@ctsinclair] said that a website he is helping to run called "Pallimed" has received almost 2 million views since 2005.

He then made the following calculation:

Two million views with an average of 1:30 minutes on a page = 3 million minutes = 50,000 hours = 2,083 days = 5.7 years of 24/7/365 informal learning on hospice and palliative care topics.

He said that this type of communication counts for nothing regarding academic advancement and added that writing another paper and having it published in a journal no one reads or a chapter in an expensive book no one will buy is considered worthwhile.

This reminded me of something I have talked about in recent presentations. The first laparoscopic cholecystectomy done in the United States took place in 1988. The procedure rapidly became popular due to its obvious benefits over traditional open surgery—smaller scars, shorter hospitalizations, quicker returns to normal activity.