RFK wants to ban scientists from publishing in top medical journals

[cab67]

22. in-house journals are not, in and of themselves, bad things.

In my field, much of the literature I use comes from journals based at a specific museum. The American Museum of Natural History publishes American Museum Novitates and Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History; the Field Museum in Chicago publishes Fieldiana; and so on. Some of these are private institutions, but not all - the Smithsonian, for example, is responsible for several publication series.

Most of these journals are peer-reviewed just like any other journal. I've reviewed manuscripts for several of them. A few of the older ones aren't peer-reviewed so much as edited, but these are in the minority and generally publish in very narrow fields in which the only experts qualified to review them work for the museum. Authors aren't necessarily museum employees, though there's usually some connection to the mother institution, either with one or more authors or with specimens described in the paper.

These are in-house journals. I cite them all the time. They're just as good as other journals.

There are even precedents for journals or periodicals operated by federal agencies. The US Geological Survey used to publish a bulletin series, for example. It started in the days before peer review became a thing, but instituted peer review after it became one.

But what's being discussed now is a whole other thing.

What scares me isn't the suggestion that the CDC and other agencies should publish in-house journals; it's that these would almost certainly be set up with an editorial board appointed by the crazy person running HHS, or by people who think like him. They would not treat the journal like other journals. They'd likely enforce some sort of ideological purity. I'm sure they'd call it something like "adherence to current departmental norms," but it would lead to the promotion of the crazy shit this crazy person believes.

If a journal based out of the CDC could be managed by proper scientists who know how peer review works, I'd be all in favor of it. But that will have to wait until the CDC answers to an HHS secretary who isn't a crazy person.