Medical editors pledge support for African journals
BMJ 2002; 325 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.325.7370.922/c (Published 26 October 2002) Cite this as: BMJ 2002;325:922
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Medical Journals in Africa are too expensive to subscribe or to
contribute to.
If one can lay their hands on US $200.00 (and that is not easy in Africa)
which journal would one subscribe to? A leading one such as BMJ or NEMJ or
some such. Yet that is the sort of money the journals like East African
Medical Journal or Central African Journal of Medicine charge. In
addition, to submit an article to such a journal one has to pay in US
dollars, a high fee (sometimes per page in the case of South African
Medical Journal) if you are not a member of the associated medical
Association. For that reason regional circulation and therefore impact
will remain small.
Given that there is improving internet access in Africa and elsewhere
these journals should be made easily available on line.
In addition there is poor relationship between the results of reseach and
implementation in Africa so the results of publication is less likely to
lead to implementation. So what is the motivation for local publication?
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
I just like to make a correction to this article, as the cited "Latin
-American medical journals online" in fact is meant to be SciELO -
Scientific Electronic Library Online.
SciELO is a model for electronic publication of collections of
scientific journals, with full text from Ibero-american selected journals
available through its portal at http://www.scielo.org.
Competing interests: No competing interests
The problem is not only money
Dear Colleagues,
There are a lot of various reasons of the dificult editorship,
publishership and subscribership in the developing world.
But the reasons are not only the money problem.
Sure, the money problem are important, but not the most first problem.
To publish a medical journal is difficult.
You will find good articles, you will evaluate them with reviewers, you
will prepare them for proper format to the journal and you will print the
journal. And after you will distirubute them.
For this processes you need;
1- Money: You can take the money from subscribers, medical and drug
companies (as advertisements) and concerned societies.
You can send the journals to the subscribers as cash on delivery.
2- Editor's and editorial team's skills and vision: This is not
related with money. For this, you must work very hardly, you must be
curious and entrepreneur. Skill is an ability but hardworking is a
habitual. You can obtain the vision as hardworking.
3- Subscriber's affinity: If you publish a fresh and a good quality
journal, subscribers will wait for the journal with impatiently.
At this point, support decide of western medical editors is good.
What can medical editors do in this point ?
1- They can find fund from some international councils to the africal
journals.
2- They can invite the editors to their work places and show them work
diciplines and work manner during 2 weeks. This visit will be very useful
and editors' visions will expand very very lot.
After all these steps, subscriber's affinity will increase to the journal
automaticly.
Example in Turkey, there are all facilities about web page
possibilities but a lot of medical journals have no web page.
The reason is not money.
The reason is a little laziness.
Sincerely,
Nevzat Alkan,M.D.
Communication Director of The Bulletin of Legal Medicine
A WAME (World Association of Medical Editors)Member
Competing interests:
Forensic Medicine
Competing interests: No competing interests