Last week I attended a grand rounds lecture at a major medical school given by an internationally-renowned, chaired professor at the peak of his academic career. Through our personal relationship, I know he also happens to be a man of great integrity. Nevertheless, this professor presented data during his lecture that he tried to publish in three different specialty journals but was ultimately rejected. Why? We will never know. In fact, I equate the traditional peer review process to the game of water polo; during a water polo meet the real action occurs beneath the water’s surface. Undeterred, the professor in question commented in the middle of his talk that he would now publish his article in Cureus. At that instant, I, as proud Editor-in-Chief of Cureus, felt a little like the guy who realizes he is not the first, or even second, choice of the teen who asks a girl to the prom. However, I quickly consoled myself; if ultimately I get to go to the prom with a beautiful girl, then where is the downside to that?

In reflecting on the experience of the above professor, I fully acknowledge the right of any journal to choose what gets published through its peer review processes. Nevertheless, this reminds me of how inefficient the “game” is – there is so much human effort required to reformat, resubmit and re-review a article. Once published, will this article be better for having survived this process? I for one am deeply skeptical. Meanwhile, if an acclaimed and politically connected academic has such problems getting his articles published, one can only imagine the difficulties that a less accomplished and, god forbid, non-academic (or even developing country) physician has in getting their ideas into the ocean of pubic discourse at many journals.

We at Cureus like to continuously, and quite provocatively, question why the medical community-at-large subjects itself to such abuse. My answer: being innately insecure, we academics engage in such self-flagellation merely for the perceived status derived from seeing one’s ideas published in luxury journals (a term I am stealing from 2013 Nobel laureate Randy Schekman) as well as the sloth embodied by most university promotion committees, who by virtue of their intellectual laziness, have chosen to make tenure decisions through journal impact factor. In response to this, I urge more physician authors to let their ideas speak for themselves by publishing in Cureus, a journal in which the process of getting published has never been easier. After all, does the journal make the scientific article, or do scientific articles make the journal?