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Quality assurance in medical publication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

Stephen Lock
Stephen Lock
Affiliation:
Research Unit, Royal College of Physicians, London
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Extract

‘The object of science is publication’. Thus John Ziman (1968), a distinguished commentator on the history of science, echoing Michael Faraday's equally terse ‘Work, finish, publish’ over a century earlier. Few will disagree: research findings are incomplete until they have been disseminated widely and discussed by peers – to be rejected, modified, or accepted as a contribution to the particular discipline. Publication was one of the major considerations that in 1665 led two important scientific societies – the Academie Francaise and the Royal Society to create the first true scientific journals: the Journal de Sçavans and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Zuckerman & Merton 1971). Nevertheless, right from the outset, neither journal was based on publishing everything that was submitted: instead, both relied on assessment of the articles by experts on the subject, chosen initially by the editor from within the council of the society and later from among scientists outside it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Section B: Biological Sciences , Volume 101: Quality Assurance in Medical Care , 1993 , pp. 359 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1993

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