Healy David
Professor of Psychiatry, Cardiff University, Wales LL57 2PW.
Mens Sana Monogr. 2008 Jan;6(1):244-56. doi: 10.4103/0973-1229.39302.
When an article is rejected by a medical journal, the standard assumption is that the article is unsound or there is something wrong with the author. Alternatively, it may have been because the journal editor was concerned about the consequences should the article be published. This article seeks to inform discussion by providing a series of instances in which editorial concerns about the consequences to journals may have counted for more than any assessment about the truth-value of the article or the motives of its authors. This claim is based on the fact that different journals may treat exactly the same article in an entirely different fashion; some issues appear to be taboo in certain journals, no matter who the author, and there is a series of explicit communications from editors that publication has been held up by their legal departments.
当一篇文章被医学期刊拒稿时，通常的假设是该文章存在缺陷或者作者有问题。或者，也可能是因为期刊编辑担心文章发表后会产生的后果。本文旨在通过提供一系列案例来引发讨论，在这些案例中，编辑对期刊所受影响的担忧可能比任何关于文章真值或作者动机的评估更为重要。这一观点基于这样一个事实，即不同的期刊可能会以完全不同的方式对待同一篇文章；某些问题在某些期刊上似乎是禁忌，无论作者是谁，而且编辑有一系列明确的说法，称发表工作被其法律部门耽搁了。
