Lessons Learnt at Eastern Mediterranean Medical Journals Conference (emmj4) at Bahrain

Ever since the formation of Eastern Mediterranean Association of Medical Editors (EMAME) in 2003, it has been meeting approximately every two years. The Founding meeting in Cairo was followed by a meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2004, the third meeting was held at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in Iran in 2006 while the fourth meeting held at Manama Bahrain from November 5-7th 2008 has just concluded. Held under the auspices of WHO EMRO these conferences have provided an excellent opportunity for international networking and increased regional cooperation to the medical editors of biomedical journals published from the EMRO region. Scientific programme at these conferences consisting of invited guest lectures, plenary presentations besides workshops has also provided a unique opportunity to the participants to learn about peer review, publication ethics, how to tackle problems of duplicate publication and plagiarism besides providing an opportunity to learn medical editing and training of editors. The conference at Bahrain had presentations in the morning followed by workshops on different subjects in the afternoon which were quite informative and interesting. Listening to renowned medical journalists and editors like Tim Albert from UK, Ana Marusic from Croatia was indeed fascinating and it had certainly enhanced the quality of the conference deliberations. It offered lot of lessons to those who were keen to learn. To begin with, the first Keynote Lecture by Tim Albert had many pearls of wisdom for the editors. He made it loud and clear to the Editors that “they should “forget about the big boys” in the field. They must try to improve the standard of their journals through a carefully thought out plan which is feasible, practical and do able keeping in view their resources and expertise. The key message in his presentation was that the Editors are the guarantor of content, they should not betray their readers. They must have a vision and make decisions to achieve that vision. The Editors must resist the various pressure groups like pharmaceutical companies, patient pressure groups, governments, Cochrane Collaboration but the worst of all the pressure groups are the authors as their priorities are to improve their CV and apply for research funding. Scientific publications, he opined, serve the needs of their authors above the needs of their readers and these publications are there to be cited and not read. He further emphasized that Editors must not knowingly publish untruth. Decision making is easier if the journals have a vision. A good decision is the one which enhances the journal’s vision but the bad decision is one that gets in its way. The Editors have to be brave and expect or even welcome criticism. Set out some objectives to be achieved and then these should be reviewed every year.” Most of the biomedical journals published from Islamic Republic of Iran are funded and patronized by various universities of medical sciences which are provided adequate fundCorrespondence