Submission policy, peer-review and editorial board members: interesting conflicts and conflicts of interest

The Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine welcomes an ever-increasing number of submissions while maintaining an acceptance level well below half of all submitted manuscripts, [1] meaning that the number and quality of submitted papers are increasing. As has been stated in the past, [2] the editors endorse a number of guidelines in order to improve presentation and style as well as adherence to current standards in publishing. Notably, all papers submitted to the SJTREM and potentially deemed suitable for publication will undergo peer-review from at least 2 (and often more) referees before making a final decision to accept or reject. Due to an increasing number of case reports, the decision to immediately reject those deemed unsuitable for the SJTREM has become more rigorous. The SJTREM wishes to maintain a main focus on original articles, review articles and solicited commentaries to selected studies. While peer-review is currently the best, yet however an imperfect, controversial and, sometimes a misused tool for vesting the scholarly work performed by others [3-5], the editors maintain their right to finally decide whether or not a paper should be published in the SJTREM. Indeed, to paraphrase the recent Lancet editorial by Richard Horton [6] “...peer review is indispensable ...but we also know that it is widely misunderstood. Peer review is not the absolute or final arbiter of scientific quality...it does not test the validity of a piece of research. It does not guarantee truth. Peer review can improve the quality of a research paper...it tells you something about the acceptability of new findings among fellow scientists...” where he explores this in a greater context of science [6]. Thus, sometimes the editors will make a decision that may contrast the opinions expressed by the referee(s). In such cases where the editorial decision deviates from that of the referee, the peer-reviewer should still be assured that we pay a great deal of attention to the meticulous work done for the SJTREM. Indeed, we highly appreciate the voluntarily work made by the international group of highly dedicated clinicians and scientists dedicating their time and knowledge to ensure the content of the SJTREM. Knowing that the community of researchers working in the field of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine in Scandinavia may not be very large and, indeed, even in the European or international setting may “interesting conflicts” arise where more than one opinion or direction of research is voiced. We truly believe these “conflicts” to be necessary means of furthering opinion and academic progress for the better good of patient care. Thus, we sometimes find it more important to “agree to disagree” than vesting in uniform voices of opinion only. While editorial integrity is the sine qua non for any academic Journal, the editors and editorial board members will, as academically active clinicians and researchers, from time to time submit papers for consideration to “their own” journal, in this case the SJTREM. The readers of SJTREM should rest assured that any means of ensuring that integrity and avoiding a corruptive type of camaraderie has been taken. The responsibility of disclosing any conflicts of interest lies with authors as well as referees and editors. Reviewers, alike with authors and editors, need to declare all conflicts of interest, not only financial ties. Often, competitive issues or personal relationships lead to more important and less obvious biases. According to the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), of which SJTREM is also a member, any conflict of interest can be said to exists when “...there is a divergence between an individual’s private interests * Correspondence: [email protected] Department of Surgery, Stavanger University Hospital, Stavanger, Norway Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Søreide et al. Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine 2010, 18:56 http://www.sjtrem.com/content/18/1/56