Various traditional medicines practiced in different parts of the world have their own theory and philosophy. They use the research methodology which is somehow different from that of the modern medicine to carry out a scientific study. Practically they use the methods and tools from the modern sciences but evolve their own methodology and the design for research projects. But when it comes to the publication most of the journals of modern sciences with relatively high impact factor do not accept them as such because of certain deviation from the paradigm of research that is in vogue. The journals of traditional medicine on the other hand have very low scoring of impact factor and many researchers hesitate to publish their works in such a journal. A young researcher is frequently lured towards the journals having high impact factor. In this process he makes changes in his/her manuscript which are not appreciable by view point of the traditional medicine. Thus the theories of traditional medicine are frequently compromised and the essence of theory and principle of a traditional medicine is not always maintained in these publications. If the same paper with all its attribute and essence of traditional medicine is published in journal devoted to traditional medicine, the author has to compromise with low impact factor. In certain other cases main stream journals reject the papers of traditional researchers on certain technical grounds for example many journals insist on chemical characterization and isolation of the plant material that is biologically active. They do not accept the whole extract of plant drug rather they ask for isolated compound. Most of the traditional medicines on the other hand argue that whole plant drug or its part such as leaf; root etc should be used in therapy as they induce biological effect in their entirety and also ensure the safety.
Such a situation requires that a separate mechanism should be developed to determine the impact factor of the research papers of traditional medicines. This will encourage the researchers of traditional medicines to publish their work in the journals devoted to traditional medicine without any major modification.
I have tried to understand your concern. Let me share with you that the concept of IMPACT FACTOR is recent one. People are working on various aspects of traditional medicines since earlier times. There are large number of publication on traditional medicines without impact factor. The impact factor of the journals depends upon certain factors. One should always represent the facts without hiding or modifying them for the sake of publication in a journal with good impact factor. Traditional medicines are so named because these are used traditionally without knowing about the chemical compounds and their characteristics. It is my humble request to every researcher working on traditional medicines to keep on publishing the highly valuable but rapidly vanishing knowledge related to traditional medicines.
@Sidhu. What knowledge of plant would u regard as highly valuable but rapidly vanishing
Dear Ridwan,
I am referring here to the knowledge related to traditional medicines
I very much agree with Dr. Sidhu... More focus should be laid by the researchers on documenting the traditional knowledge carefully and present it in such form which is helpful to the scientific and general society. There is a drastic need of attention towards making the impact of the paper rather than getting the paper into impact factor. Irrespective of where you publish, if you maintain the high quality and scientific ethics in your MS, it will be sought after by other researchers and cited too. Best wishes..!!
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