Diagnosticpathology.eu - Reflections 2020 and Perspectives 2021
Abstract
Background and present situation: The journal www.diagnosticpathology.eu experienced a difficult year in 2020 and expects poor perspectives in 2021. It is still of interest to several colleagues and its articles are still cited after years. However, this journal with technically unique features such as publication of virtual slides, preformatted case reports, as well as advanced methods of annotations was not perceived as valuable for the career of the contributing authors.
Details: Authors are highly interested in the maximum benefit from their research which is obviously regulated by research financing and / or by their laboratory institution and administration.
Each administration has to implement financially oriented regulations in science which are based upon the ‘scoring’ of the publications. Therefore, certain score systems such as citation indices of various algorithms have been created. They possess remarkable financial impact. They automatically support the main stream of journals and regulate the market.
Furthermore, competition in open access journals has increased and predatory journals exist. To attract scientists several open access journals do not limit their publication area to specific medical research or disease specification and publish a broad spectrum of research themes, diseases and clinical presentations.
Forecast: The year 2021 will become as difficult as the year 2020 for the journal www.diagnosticpathology.eu if its goal and business model will remain. It was based on voluntary resources and focused on innovative research publication only. Therefore, new goals have to be defined. These will include:
Redefinition and reorganization of the journal. The journal might not remain a ‘simple’ communication tool for research and science. It might be expanded to become a ‘real research tool’ in scientific communication.
New automated features have to be implemented. These might include ‘estimates for future impact’ of published articles based upon entropy considerations and, automated review of submitted articles.
Conclusions: We still believe in our basic concept that ‘communication in research’ has to be separated from financial issues. It should take into account that nature can best be understood by investigating in its boundaries.
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