"These major journals vie for high-profile articles, which will be much cited, and therefore reinforce the validity of publication in themselves," according to authors Thomas Johnson, PhD, George Martin, MD, and James Smith, PhD in a recent editorial published in the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences. "Such self-referential systems are fraught with the possibility of abuse."
Authors Johnson, Martin, and Smith point out that editors competing for "first to publish" claims and egregious postpublication claims by institutions causes even more problems in the scientific process.
"It is absolutely essential for the good of our joint enterprise in exploring the biological basis of aging that issues of scientific validity, priority, and scholarly accuracy be properly attributed," according to the authors. "A scientific society such as GSA provides an appropriate forum for public discussion of such issues."
The full guidelines for the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences scholarly forum are being worked out and will be available online and without a fee. For further information, including discussion guidelines, please visit the Instructions to Authors available at http://biomed.gerontologyjournals.org.
"We envision a public discussion of recently published articles from any journal, wherein issues of scientific validity, generality, issues of priority, and claims of the article can be discussed in a manner similar to what should be done by an informed reviewer," said Johnson, Martin, and Smith.