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Correspondence

Indian Pediatr 2016;53: 1030-1031

Faculty Promotion Guidelines: Authorship and Indexing Issues Need More Deliberations: Authors Reply

 

Rakesh Aggarwal and Peush Sahni

Email: [email protected]

  


We thank the authors of this communication for their insightful comments
on our editorial [1]. The use of indexing in journal databases as a surrogate marker for quality of journals has its own pitfalls, as was acknowledged in our editorial. We agree with the suggestion that the list of databases should be expanded, but suggestion of a specific number of databases is arbitrary. Any index or database that is widely recognized for its quality, should be welcome.

Similarly, we are not sure why they insist on inclusion of a journal in two databases as a specific criterion. There is no doubt that increasing the number of databases to qualify would increase the likelihood of ‘acceptable quality’ but then why not 3 or 4? The objective is not to make it difficult for good journals to qualify but to try and weed out low-quality or ‘predatory’ journals. If the included databases are chosen carefully for their quality, inclusion of a journal in one database should be as good as inclusion in two or more. After all, most databases share the criteria they use to evaluate journals for inclusion. These criteria are often based on principles of transparency and best practice that distinguish legitimate journals and publishers from the non-legitimate ones, such as those jointly identified by the Committee on Publication Ethics, the Directory of Open Access Journals, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, and the World Association of Medical Editors [2].

With respect to the limitation on number of authors, their argument that gift authorship is widely prevalent is valid, and is likely to have been one of the reasons for the Medical Council of India (MCI) recommendations. They however contradict themselves by stating that "it’s hard to believe that he/she will easily give away his/her precious research and first authorship to his seniors, at least for two papers", suggesting that juniors in a department can refuse ‘gift’ authorship to their senior colleagues. If they can decline ‘gift’ authorship to a senior colleague, one would think that they would also be likely to refuse gift authorship to other colleagues, who are competitors, if all the authors listed on a publication were to get equal credit at the time of promotion. Limiting credit to two authors may paradoxically also increase the risk of gift authorship, if the primary author recognizes that the persons listed at 3rd or 4th position or beyond would not benefit from such authorship in promotions.

Whether research and publications should indeed be criteria for promotion is a wider issue. Most academic medical centers aim for excellence in three areas, namely patient-care, teaching and research. Though contribution in significant measure by faculty members in each of these may be desirable, most are unable to do so and end up contributing to only one or two of the areas [3]. Our medical teaching institutions and regulatory bodies need to engage in a debate on this subject. However, this issue was beyond the scope of our editorial, which, given our affiliation to the Indian Association of Medical Journal Editors, dealt primarily with issues that concern biomedical journals and their editors.

Overall, we accept that what constitutes ‘creditable research’ that should count towards academic promotions is not easy to define, and the suggestions in our editorial are certainly not infallible. The objective of our editorial was to highlight this very problem. The letters received are heartening, and we hope that these will keep this issue in focus and engender debate that will make the process of academic promotions in our medical colleges more robust.

References

1. Aggarwal R, Gogtay N, Kumar R, Sahni P, for the Indian Association of Medical Journal Editors. The revised guidelines of the Medical Council of India for academic promotions: need for a rethink. Indian Pediatr. 2016;53:23-6.

2. Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. http://publicationethics.org/files/Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.pdf. Accessed June 10, 2016.

3. Fleming VM, Schindler N, Martin GJ, DaRosa DA. Separate and equitable promotion tracks for clinician-educators. JAMA. 2005;294:1101-4.

 

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