Last week a friend of mine told me about watching a notable old movie at a film festival entitled “Sergeant York.” Besides being a story about WWI and starring Gary Cooper, I can’t say I know much about this film other than one interesting fact; it was also nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award in 1941. Of note, it did not win, losing out to “How Green is My Valley.” Now before you start to worry about me running off on a tangent here, I’ll get to my point. Two other movies were also nominated, but lost out, for the 1941 Best Picture Academy Award: “The Maltese Falcon” and “Citizen Kane.” Now through the lens of hindsight is there almost anyone alive today who would truly believe that the Academy Award voting process got the decision right back in ‘41?

To my way of thinking such a question is directly relevant to the world of peer-reviewed medical publishing. How often have important ideas in medicine struggled to get published within contemporary leading journals, only to have such ideas be recognized as true genius after the passage of time? Two weeks ago, my friend and mentor Tom Fogarty was honored by his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame by none other than President Barak Obama. Tom was recognized especially for his invention of the Fogarty Balloon Catheter, which through another lens of history has proven to be one of the most important medical devices ever created. Clearly once upon a time the reviewers of the scientific article written by a young Tom Fogarty to report his new discovery must have recognized the genius of his invention, right? Not at all! Tom’s 1965 article reporting how and why his new catheter might work was rejected three times before ultimately being accepted. Even today, Tom has no idea why so many (supposedly) open-minded and wise reviewers rebuffed this important article.

I don’t for a second believe that Cureus reviewers are innately smarter, or politically less biased, than the reviewers who rejected the original Fogarty balloon catheter paper. The Cureus review and publication process, however, does not put reviewers in a position to choose what is important or unimportant medical science. As long as the article in question represents a good faith effort (following peer review) to apply reasonable scientific standards, and is neither fraudulent nor clinically dangerous, Cureus will publish your article for free with no questions asked!

Cureus believes that good ideas available to the broad court of scientific critique will invariably be discovered over time and serve to advance medical science – “the cream will generally rise to the top.” Meanwhile wrong-headed scientific ideas can and will be discredited. Very importantly, we at Cureus also believe that SIQ, our unique post-publication peer-review process, can, through the democratic power of the many, serve to discern real and enduring scientific quality over time, not unlike like the once overlooked masterpiece “Citizen Kane”. It is our fervent hope that at some point in the future, after the passage of enough time, when we look back at Cureus’ growing library of medical articles, we will see that our SIQ system can accurately foretell the inductees into the National Inventor Hall of Fame or, for that matter, the winners of medical science Academy Awards.

Please don’t forget that all Cureus readers are invited to cast their SIQ ballots after each and every article they read!