KARACHI: Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) has expressed surprise over the degradation of all the index of medical journals of Pakistan by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and demanded for early withdrawal of this imprudent decision.
This was stated by Secretary General PMA Centre Dr S.M Qaisar Sajjad, Chairman Editorial Board – JPMA Dr Sarwar Jamil Siddiqui, Editor-in-Chief – JPMA Dr Fatema Jawad and Treasurer PMA Centre Dr Qazi Muhammad Wasiq in a joint press conference held at PMA House Karachi on Wednesday.
They said the PMA and editors of these journals are seriously concerned about the degradation of all the index medical journals of Pakistan.
They said Journal of Pakistan Medical Association (JPMA) was started in 1954 and indexed 1975. The journal was to share experiences and spread scientific knowledge. The benefit of this ultimately goes to the wellbeing of patients.
They said Journal Recognition System of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan has downgraded all the highest category biomedical journals of the country to the so-called CLAY Medallion and Category X.
This was done by applying a new Journal Recognizing System launched by HEC and the results were displayed on the HEC website in January 2020 which is freely available to all viewers around the world.
“With all the adversities being faced in the country, twelve academic journals from Pakistan which include three medical journals enjoy the impact factor. The three medical journals have struggled to keep their standards at a universally recognized level. These include The Journal of Pakistan Medical Association (JPMA), published by the Pakistan Medical Association; Pakistan Journal of Medical Science, a private journal and Journal of College of Physicians and Surgeons (JCPSP) published in Karachi.
All these journals have an impact factor and are indexed with the highest indexing agencies as SCOPUS, PubMed, EMBASE, SCIE, BIOSIS and WOS. They are recognized by WHO and WAME, they added.
They further said the editors of these journals besides publishing their journals regularly concentrate on improving e quality of the manuscripts they accept for publication and accelerate their efforts to improve the standard of their journals.
“They follow an author friendly policy, help and guide them to improve their manuscripts with the help of members of the editorial board and peer reviewers. The editors know their rights but they also remember their duties and responsibilities which include teaching and training through workshops,” they added.
This attitude of the editors of the leading medical journals has never been appreciated by the authorities at the HEC, which is applying a new system, developed by a private company on a trial basis.
It is rather surprising that this new software could downgrade all the top grade journals with one click. Secondly in the previous years when the journals were being accredited manually by experts was that an inadequate method being used by inexperienced members of the R and D department of HEC, they asked.
The other important aspect is that if HEC was running the software on a trial basis why did they publicize the results on their website which is visible around the globe?
PMA leaders said this amounts to a derogatory act against all the involved publications. JPMA along with the other two indexed journals will continue to enjoy the good reputations universally but it will be the unfortunate Pakistani authors who will suffer as they have to publish a number of articles in W category journals for promotion. They will have difficulty in finding a foreign journal and most of all deprive their pockets of at least Rs100000 for each article, if accepted.
They demanded that the HEC should immediately withdraw this software, so that all the index medical journal should be again on category W and in future the stakeholders/ the editors of the journals should be consulted before making these kinds of erratic decisions.