You will note in the table provided that 8 of the 16 articles published in this double issue are research reports about work conducted by Turkish researchers in their country. These researchers are to be congratulated for their diligence, especially regarding women’s maternal health issues. All their work was double-blind peer-reviewed, and each met the standards that were in place on the date that their articles were accepted for publication. It is necessary to report, however, that in the future Health Care for Women International will not become the “journal of Turkish women’s health issues,” literally or figuratively. The academic system in Turkey encourages scholars to publish in international journals, preferably in the English language. That too, as an editor, I think is positive, but the amount of pressure that the Turkish academic system places on its faculty seems excessive as reported to me by authors from that country. I have been told, once their work is accepted for publication, they need to provide evidence that their work was subject to a process of double blind peer review and that their work was immediately published on line, and linked to an international journal website, and that for their publication to count on their dossiers their work must also be assigned to a print issue with pages and dates, all before they submit their personnel file for retention or promotion. The Turkish academic system does not credit authors with publications who present only a “doi” number as proof of publication. In the twenty first century, such a system is ludicrous in that assigning an article page numbers that has already been published online has nothing at all to do with the quality of a candidate’s scholarship. There is nothing an editor can do about such systems. This year, far too many times, authors have written to our editorial team begging for work to be published in print immediately. Lest anyone think this it is a good idea to beg an editor, know that it is not!
Regardless of variations in the structure of academic departments around the world, how our editors will judge international contributions will be an evolutionary process. As that process changes, no country’s scholars will be prioritized over another’s scholars regardless of begging or how stringent one country’s evaluation standards is. When I became editor of Health Care for Women International, many of the authors submitting work to our journal were highly educated health practitioners with advanced degrees from academic institutions, and then employed by similar academic institutions. Those institutions required authors to participate in the world of science by attending international conferences. There practitioners shared evidence regarding how to improve practice. If an author could explain how culture or the political system in their country affected the way they practiced, their contribution would be judged to be international by our reviewers of international journals. Some journal editors still use that standard.
The standards are now different at Health Care for Women International because our readership has also evolved. Our readers and authors now include social scientists, public health scholars and those whose expertise is in the humanities, although our original audience of health care practitioners remains. Today we expect authors to explain the applicability of a practice elsewhere, and to generate hypotheses that can be tested globally. We want them to consider the public health implications of their work, beyond their nation’s borders. On that note, I was impressed by Ebru Küçük and Kıymet Yeşilçiçek Çalık’s Turkish study because their finding that it is number of people present when performing vaginal exams during labor rather than number of vaginal exams that take place that increase risk of infection for mothers and neonates. This is important because it challenges an idea that was commonly accepted globally, that there is some ideal number of vaginal exams during labor that should take place and we now know that is not the case.
Consult the table on your own to find other examples of author contributions that will meet our new standards. Unfortunately, many published at this time would not meet the new standard.
Editor-in-Chief
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