Journal List > J Korean Med Sci > v.28(10) > 1022080

Hong: Lesson of the Seventh International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication
The 7th International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication was held in Chicago from 8 to 10 September 2013. Dr. Drummond Rennie, Contributing Deputy Editor of JAMA, was the Congress Director, and editors of world prestigious journals and ICMJE member journals contributed the Congress Advisory Board. This congress has been organized every 4 yr.
The congress is a good opportunity to communicate with many editors face-to-face of the global leading medical journals. Also it gives a chance to hear speeches of historical veteran editors. Since the congress designs many programs and gives novel lessons for editors of scholarly journals, the editors may reinforce both spirit and skill of editing. It is strongly recommended for all of the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE) member editors to attend the congress.
The editors at the congress composedly analyzed status of many editing-related issues, said prospective visions on editing, and discussed over their ideas. The congress program included many sessions for oral and poster presentation: congress keynote speech; authorship; citations; peer review; ethical issues and misconduct; bias; trial registration; data/content sharing, availability, and access; quality of trials; quality of reporting trials; reporting guidelines; postpublication access, dissemination, and exchange; Open Access and dissemination; editorial and peer review processes; registration of clinical trials (1). Most of the attendants were sincere throughout the whole congress, and discussed much. In every topic, the lines on the floor microphones were long and the moderators used to excuse for their patience and renunciation.
At the beginning of the congress, Dr. Drummond Rennie gave a welcome message, and Professor John P.A. Ioannidis (University of Ioannina, Greece) gave a keynote lecture which was entitled "Replication and Reproducible Research: Utopia or Reality?" He said that there is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false, mostly due to bias. He suggested that editors and authors should concern it and try to approach the pure "gold" standard by several ways (2). Later Dr. Drummond Rennie made a short speech as the Congress Director, and all audience gave him tremendous standing handclapping. It was a great shiny scene of my life to see for the highly respected veteran editor. In 2009, he received 'the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award' from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in recognition of his advocacy for the free exchange of unbiased scientific information (3).
The ethics issues on research and publication were hot topics as usual. Several topics were presented on the ethics of editing and writing, study registration, and bias. The COPE introduced its education activity on ethics by its eLearning modules. In addition to this, a newly recognized shocking misconduct form was introduced as "Fake Reviewer." One South Korean scientist recommended fake reviewers and he reviewed his manuscripts by himself under name of fake reviewers. The journal editors suspected his misconduct by immediate review comments with same language, and confirmed that the reviewers were faked. By close review, his many published articles were retracted. This case is announced with photo on the web of the Retraction Watch (4). The misconduct is a tragic outcome based on poor ethical notion and strong social drive of competitive publication in Korea. This new form of misconduct must be properly managed in his institution.
Another interesting presentation was "Editorial Triage: Potential Impact." It reported a correlation of editorial triage and acceptance after peer review of manuscripts in PLOS One, PLOS Pathogen, and PLOS Medicine. It may be a good model to adopt in editing journals which have many subscriptions. Also it may be more informative to add citation data after publication.
A new guideline was proposed on writing case reports which was entitled "Consensus-Based Case Report Guidelines Development: CARE Guidelines." The 'CARE Guidelines' recommends 13 items to include in case reports (5). The guideline must be a standard format of case reports. It is necessary to introduce the CARE guidelines to KAMJE member journals.
KAMJE was founded in 1996 and has greatly contributed to upgrade member journals (6). The essence of the KAMJE activity is encouraging to edit on global standard. The congress is a sound ground of not only introducing survey or research data on journal publication and editing but also of education of editors for global editing. It is recommended for KAMJE member journal publishers to encourage their editors to actively join the international congress for their advanced editing. Most of the world prestigious medical journals are competing like star wars for the bigger size, which is a real threat to all KAMJE journals for survival. More strenuous efforts of the editors are required to overcome the threat.

References

1. Final Program and Abstracts. International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication. Sep. 8-10, 2013; Available at www.peerreviewcongress.org.
2. Ioannidis JPA. Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Med. 2005; 2:e124.
3. Voelker R. JAMA editor honored as champion of integrity in scientific research and publishing. JAMA. 2009; 301:1117.
4. Retraction Watch. South Korean plant compound researcher faked email addresses so he could review his own studies. accessed on September 18 2013. http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/.
5. Gagnier JJ, Kienle G, Altman DG, Moher D, Sox H, Riley D. the CARE Group. The CARE guidelines: consensus-based clinical case report guideline development. J Clin Epidemiol. 2013; 09. 11. pii: S0895-4356(13)00317-X. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2013.08.003. [Epub ahead of print].
6. Suh CO, Oh SJ, Hong ST. Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors at the forefront of improving the quality and indexing chances of its member journals. J Korean Med Sci. 2013; 28:648–650.
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Sung-Tae Hong
https://orcid.org/http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0300-1944

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