Is there a case for an international medical scientific press council?
D. G. Altman, I. Chalmers and A. Herxheimer
Medical Statistics Laboratory, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London, England.
Serious abuse of editorial power is rarely publicized, but evidence that it
occurs is accumulating. Authors who believe that they have been dealt with
unfairly have little possibility of a hearing of their complaint, and cases
cannot easily be publicized because of fears of legal action. We describe
briefly three cases in which the alleged misdeeds indicate that there were
legitimate questions that needed answers. In the first case, an editor
republished a previously published article without the authors' permission
(but stated the opposite), attacked it in an accompanying editorial, and
then denied the authors the right of reply. The other cases concerned a
commissioned review article that was plagiarized and an editor with an
undisclosed vested interest. An appeal process is needed for authors who
think that they are victims of editorial abuse of power. We suggest that
the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors turn its attention
to editorial misconduct and explore possible procedures for allowing
authors' grievances to be heard and for possible sanctions if complaints
are upheld. An International Medical Scientific Press Council might be
established to produce a code of conduct for editors and a corresponding
taxonomy of inappropriate editorial behavior.
