Author: Alex Muacevic, MD

The Long, Arduous Journey to Publication: It Doesn’t Have to be That Way

I recently co-authored an article submitted to Nature Urology, a subdomain of the Nature publishing group. It took roughly eight weeks of review before we received feedback from the editorial office. In December 2016 we were finally presented with several reviewer questions that had to be answered before a final decision could be made. After all outstanding questions and reviewer requests had been answered the article was finally, mercifully “accepted in principle” on February 3rd. That was far from the end of it, however, as another round of editing requests arrived on May 11th.

This time the requests came directly from the Nature editorial office. The majority of the requests concerned tightening up the narrative flow and bringing the article in line with their in-house style. At this time, we discovered that the edits already made by the editorial office were so extreme that the editors had to check with us to make sure the meaning of our words (and indeed the entire article itself) had not been altered by their editing process. All of this for arbitrary language and formatting issues.

On May 15th, with the article still unpublished, we were yet again asked to check affiliations and other minor aspects of the article. The article was finally published yesterday, May 23rd, roughly eight months after submission. (And it could have been worse!)

How does this kind of perfectionism serve the scientific community? Why does the editorial office of the Nature publishing group change the text of professional scientific authors in a way that even they are not sure if the scientific information is still correct? The editorial work of so-called high-end and high-ranking journals has reached a level where their interaction is beyond thoroughness. It is absurd to edit every paragraph, every sentence, and even every word. This does not serve the scientific community. Instead it unnecessarily prolongs the publication process to guarantee the house style of a specific journal. The scientific message does not change with this heavy editing, but an article may look better and therefore may be better sold by the publisher based on the work of scientific authors.

The process (and underlying philosophy) are different with Cureus. In short, we rely on the individual capabilities of our authors, who also retain their copyright. We want to make the publishing process fast and efficient, so while we provide a certain level of support to our authors, we do not intend to alter their scientific message. Instead, we appeal to their own sense of pride and responsibility for adequate language and general accuracy.

In the end it is the scientific community that will evaluate if the article is scientifically sound, informative and correct. If it is not, the article will be met with heavy criticism, both via a low SIQ score and negative comments attached to the article. This system is not only much faster but also unbiased and transparent. We want to keep the focus of scientific publishing on what we feel is most important – the fast, fair and uncomplicated dissemination of interesting findings around the world.

Publishing all credible science: Where do we draw the line?

Stemming from the belief that market-driven open access publishers are inherently predisposed to publish any article for which an author is willing to pay, there is a common prejudice that the scientific quality of such articles must be inferior to those published within non-open access journals. Whether true or not for other journals, this rationale certainly does not apply to a free publication model like Cureus.

For us, ensuring scientific quality is about preserving the brand of Cureus; by undermining credibility, bad science will, over the long term, inevitably diminish every conceivable measure of journalistic success. Destroying our reputation is the last thing Cureus leadership wants to see happen. However, working against this same concern is our journal’s philosophical commitment to publish all “credible” medical science; inevitably these two contradicting objectives require a delicate balancing act.

Despite (or as a sad result of) Cureus’ idealism, our journal sometimes receives questionable submissions: carelessly prepared manuscripts, sloppily presented results, poorly argued and unfounded conclusions, etc. Authors occasionally suffer from the misperception, perhaps due to our status as an open access journal, that we will publish whatever they submit and therefore they need invest only minimal effort.

Not so fast! I must caution against such thinking. Cureus is happy to publish articles that might be rejected elsewhere due to “political” or contrarian philosophical reasons, but like most quality journals, we will not abide substandard manuscripts. Cureus takes peer review and editorial oversight very seriously. Ensuring that authors do not abuse the easy-to-use Cureus submission system is quickly becoming a full-time job for editors who, frankly, have many better things to do.

Please do not confuse the ease of Cureus submission process with a willingness to overlook second-rate science. Does your article have a clear message and can it help interested colleagues in their daily clinical and/or scientific work? Put yourself in a reader’s shoes; if you were a reader, would you feel that the author in question has shown proper respect for your time? If you cannot answer yes, please do not submit your article to Cureus.

Anyone who intends to submit a shoddy article (and yes, you know who you are), be prepared to be blocked during editorial review. And should anyone choose to abuse Cureus’ generous spirit more than once, they should expect to be banned from our platform for an eternity. Meanwhile, the vast majority of conscientious authors, who both respect their potential readers and do their utmost to produce a quality manuscript, will be amply rewarded with a hassle-free submission process, and, once published, a large, appreciative audience of readers.

Ultimately we at Cureus like to think that a beautiful article of science is in itself, the best reward possible. Thank you for your understanding, cooperation and support.