The dark side

doi:10.1136/bmj.39169.894398.1F

BMJ 2007;334:710 (7 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39169.894398.1F

Letters

Impact factors

The dark side

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Martyn's tongue in cheek advice to the new editor of a prestigious—iffictional—journal is to raise the impact factor by variousmeasures including "resist[ing] any sympathy when a paper issubmitted on an unfashionable condition such as deafness."¹As a psychiatrist working with deaf sign language users I wasdelighted to see, at last, a mention of deafness in a prestigious—andnon-fictional—journal.

My teams' attempts at getting articles published in mainstreamjournals have been met with responses such as "not of generalinterest" and "there is a misspelling with Deaf spelt with acapital D" (this is the recognised name for culturally deafsign language users). My personal favourite is a review of apaper on adapting an instrument into British Sign Language:"I would expect that particularly among deaf people an interviewposes difficulties because of the sensory handicap, and themost logical choice would be to use or . . . [Full text of this article]

Helen E J Miller, consultant psychiatrist, National Deaf Service

London SW12 9HW

helen.miller@swlstg-tr.nhs.uk