Response to Getting Your First Publication in Medical Education—Why? What? Where? How?

Dear Editor,

The recent article in your journal—commentary on “Getting your first publication in medical education” is certainly a good read. We congratulate the author for the commentary which provides a crisp gist of the “Why, What, Where and How” of publishing which is surely helpful to the novices venturing into this field. ¹

In the field of health sciences, having one's own publications is now no longer a representation of being a stalwart or an expert in the field. It has become a prerequisite while obtaining a postgraduate degree, applying for jobs in health science colleges, universities, and hospitals, or even being promoted to higher ranks. The article guides on why and what to publish and helps to boost the morale of beginners by saying “Everyone has something to contribute, no matter how big or small.”

The commentary also mentions that once published, the articles are indexed in bibliographic databases such as PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science, making them searchable by future researchers. We would like to draw the attention of the new researchers to this point and highlight that it is of utmost importance that they very carefully check and ensure the indexing status of the journals they plan to send their articles. Not all journals are indexed with PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, or Scopus. Moreover, various governing bodies, organizations, and institutes have their own preferences for indexing agencies and researchers should select the journal accordingly. ²

The author also urges the scientific community to be aware of predatory publishers. Researchers, clinicians, teachers, and students not only have an ever-rising pressure to increase their number of publications, but also need to be the first or corresponding authors. The competition to have several fast publications may cause them to easily succumb to predatory journals. Although the author mentions that researchers can identify legitimate or illegitimate publishers by making use of available checklists for predatory journals, we would like to emphasize that: (i) Available checklists are not foolproof and that the criteria need to be reformed. ³ (ii) For open access journals, the researchers should verify the authenticity of the journal with The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (iii) Furthermore, it has been observed and studied that highly ranked citation databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and so on are also infiltrated with some predatory journals due to which researchers should be extra cautious in not just the selection of the journal but also in citing references from such journals in their own studies.^4,5

A variety of other aspects such as journal impact factor, business model and projection of the publishing houses on social media also happen to play an important role in journal selection. ⁶ Although to increase the credibility of one's work a reputed publisher should always be the first and safest choice, ⁷ it may not be easy for beginners. Good mentorship practices may also be established so that the new researchers and trainees gain knowledge to make appropriate choices of the journals. After all, mindful publishing is important rather than remaining unpublished. ⁸