WikiJournal of Medicine/Editorial board

WikiJournal of Medicine
Open access • Publication charge free • Public peer review • Wikipedia-integrated

The editorial board handles any confidential article submissions, and has final responsibility for ensuring that robust academic peer review is performed in a timely manner. Information about editorial board responsibilities, and how to apply to join the editorial board, are found below.

WikiJournal of Medicine

An open access journal with
no publication costs – About

www.WikiJMed.org
ISSN: 2002-4436
Frequency: Continuous
Since: March 2014
Funding: Wikimedia Foundation
Publisher: WikiJournal User Group

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2020:
Article in The Signpost

2019:
Presentation at Wikimania 2019
Presentation at American Psychological Association
Article in The Signpost
Article in the Wikimedia UK blog

2018:
Presentation at APO forum
Interview with Wikimedia Foundation
Winners of the best articles submitted in 2017
Gained COPE membership
Presentation at Wikimania 2018

More mentions

Contact & Contribute

Editorial board members

Mikael Häggström
From: March 2014
Fields: medicine, radiology, pathology

Dr Mikael Häggström is from Uddevalla, Sweden, and graduated from Uppsala University, Faculty of Medicine in 2013. He is currently a clinical informatics fellow at University of Minnesota.

Gwinyai Masukume
From: 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2022
Additionally: deputy social media manager
Fields: epidemiology, biostatistics, women's health, Wikipedia

Dr Gwinyai Masukume is a medical doctor and public health researcher. He holds a PhD in Medicine and Health. His main interest is Women’s health. As an active researcher, he has completed peer review for 20 journals and has co-authored over 35 publications.

Thomas Shafee
From: 24 July 2016
Additionally: social media manager
Fields: biochemistry, protein evolution, bioinformatics, convergent evolution, protein engineering, experimental evolution, data science, data visualization, science communication

Dr Thomas Shafee is a biochemist researching antimicrobial proteins at the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, Melbourne, Australia. He is particularly interested in how evolutionary information can be used to improve proteins for human uses.

Michaël R. Laurent
From: 16 August 2016
Additionally: social media manager
Fields: geriatrics

Dr Michaël R. Laurent obtained his medical degree from KU Leuven, Belgium in 2009 and specialized in internal medicine and geriatrics. His PhD in molecular endocrinology regarded the topic of androgens and male osteoporosis. He works as a geriatrician at the Imelda general hospital and as a consultant in metabolic and rare bone diseases at the University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium. He has (co-)authored over 100 publications.

Netha Hussain
From: 3 December 2017
Fields: neuroscience, neurorehabilitation

Dr Netha Hussain obtained a medical degree from Calicut Medical College, India. She has a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has previously volunteered as a Wikipedian-in-Residence at Calicut Medical College. She lives in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Roger Watson
From: 30 January 2018
Fields: nursing, psychometrics, nursing care, human nutrition

Professor Roger Watson is from the United Kingdom and is based at the University of Hull. Roger serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Advanced Nursing. He has co-authored over 400 journal articles.

Keith Brain
From: 11 April 2018
Fields: pharmacology, physiology, medical education, autonomic nervous system

Dr Keith Brain graduated in 1999 from the University of Sydney, Australia. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, and the lecturer in Pharmacology at Christ Church, Oxford.

Eric Youngstrom
From: 13 June 2018
Fields: clinical psychology, bipolar disorder, child psychology, evidence based assessment, psychometrics, symptoms dissemination, adolescent psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry

American clinical child and adolescent psychologist, professor of psychology and neuroscience, and psychiatry, at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a co-founder of Helping Give Away Psychological Science.

Mark Worthen
From: 8 November 2018
Fields: psychology

Mark D Worthen PsyD is a clinical-forensic psychologist in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Jason Dixon
From: 23 November 2018
Fields: clinical psychology, clinical education, psychometrics, epidemiology, clinical supervision

Alaa Najjar
From: 21 December 2018
Fields: physician, Wikimedian, Internet activist

Medical doctor studied at Alexandria University. Active on Wikipedia since December 2014. Steward with extensive wiki editing. Has more than 430K edits.

Amelia Buttress
From: 15 May 2020
Fields: public health, cultural studies, media studies, social determinants of health

Dr. Amelia Buttress received a PhD in social and behavioral sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Health, Behavior, & Society in 2014 and an MA from the European Graduate School in 2006. Amelia has worked in human rights, digital arts and media literacy and education, and public mental health. Dr. Buttress has been incorporating Wikipedia into teaching at both the Media, Politics, & Evidence in Public Health and Under Pressure: Health, Wealth, & Poverty levels since 2016.

Shani Evenstein Sigalov
From: 31 July 2019
Additionally: adviser
Fields: educational technology, medical education, education, curriculum development, Wikipedia, Wikidata, digital humanities, self-regulated learning, generative artificial intelligence, lifelong learning, collaborative learning, flip teaching

Working as an EdTech Innovation Strategist at the the NY/American Medical Program, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University [TAU], focusing on Curriculum Development, E-learning Strategies and Medical Education.

Guy Vandegrift
From: 12 January 2016
Additionally: adviser
Fields: physics, engineering, mathematics

Professor Guy Vandegrift teaches physics and astronomy at the Lake Campus of Wright State University, and is currently working to develop Quizbank.

Daniel Oerther
From: 13 June 2022
Fields: environmental biotechnology, food security, sanitation, drinking water

Professor Daniel B. Oerther is from the United States and is based at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Dan currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Environmental Engineering and previously served as an international editorial advisory board members for the journal Perspectives in Public Health. He has co-authored over 100 journal articles.

Athikhun Suwannakhan
From: 13 November 2022
Fields: Clinical anatomy, anatomical variations, computed tomography, systematic review, meta-analysis

Dr. Athikhun Suwannakhan is an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok. His research interests include human anatomy, clinical significance of anatomical variations, systematic reviews and meta-analysis.

Previous board members

James Heilman
From: 1 January 2015 to 1 August 2017
Fields: physician

Diptanshu Das
From: 21 July 2016 to 9 August 2018
Fields: neurology

Lisa G. Kipersztok
From: 1 January 2015 to 1 January 2019
Fields: researcher

Mike Nicolaije
From: 24 March 2015 to 24 March 2019

Carl Fredrik Sjöland
From: 4 March 2015 to 4 March 2019
Fields: Wikimedian in residence, researcher

Kai Zhang Add to Wikidata
Fields: researcher

Angelo Basteris
From: 30 November 2019
Fields: stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, welfare technology

Prashanth N Srinivas
From: 7 June 2019
Fields: public health, health equity

Candace Makeda Moore
From: 11 October 2020
Additionally: social media manager
Fields: informatics, radiology, data science

Activity

Coordinating peer reviews

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Editorial board members are expected to participate in the coordination of the peer review process of submitted articles to the board. This includes corresponding with the author, identifying potential peer reviewers, corresponding with peer reviewers and reminding peer reviewers of the review due dates. An editorial board member does not need to participate in the peer review coordination of every submitted article.

Article decisions

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The purpose of the editorial board is to form consensus about whether to include upcoming articles in the journal, based on multiple factors such as scope, peer reviewer recommendations and utility for Wikipedia. In the same manner as Wikipedia is not a democracy, the means of decision making is discussion leading to consensus; Straw polls can be used to test for consensus, but polls or surveys can impede, rather than foster, discussion.

Editorial board members will be notified by email to wjmboard googlegroups.com (only accepting emails from board members) when an article submission is up for decision, together with whether it needs to be held strictly confidential or not. An editorial board member does not need to comment on every article submission. In addition, editorial board members should join the public group of WikiJMed to stay updated about what's going on in the project. In practice, members of the editorial board have substantial communication by email, especially for confidential submissions. Public submissions can be discussed at their pages. Anyone may add their opinions and comments for such online discussions.

The main outcomes from inclusion discussions are:

Acceptance of the article
Rejection until there is an acceptable peer review of the article
Rejection until article is modified
Rejection outright

Other activities

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The editorial board also discusses and makes decisions regarding the overall operation of the journal. However, major issues that do not involve confidential matters should be discussed at the journal's public forums, at Talk:WikiJournal of Medicine, and/or the public Google Group of the journal through wijoumed googlegroups.com. Editorial board members are encouraged to invite potential additional participants to the journal.

Editorial board members may also opt to include themselves in the mailing list about matters related to the overall WikiJournal organization at the general WikiJournal mailing list. Matters that are important to the WikiJournal of Medicine should be emailed to its own mailing list as well. Editorial board members may also participate in online meetings, whose dates are usually announced by the board email list.

All positions in the journal are voluntary, that is, for no financial gain.

Editor-in-chief and assistant

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The editor-in-chief has final responsibility for all operations and policies.

The assistant to the editor-in-chief will act in place of the editor-in-chief on the event of his resignation or incapacity.

Both the editor-in-chief and the assistant to the editor-in-chief are expected to participate in public relations of the journal, including interviews and articles when opportunities arise. They are expected to add newly elected board members to the wjmboard googlegroups.com, whose presentation page (visible to members only) contains additional information for board members.

At least the editor-in-chief and the assistant to the editor-in-chief are entrusted with the journal's password to administer the journal's WikiJMed.org domain at GoDaddy. This domain needs to be renewed every other year, at a cost of approximately $30 each time. Logging into the domain's account at GoDaddy also avails for changing the email addresses included in the common email address (known by the editorial board) for updates about the journal. This site is also where redirection to another target than the current one may be done in the future.

Duties of the editor-in-chief

The editor-in-chief has final responsibilities for the operations and policies of the journal. Contact details of the editor-in-chief should be stated online. The editor-in-chief should act as the point of contact for questions relating to research and publication ethics. The editor-in-chief should acknowledge receipt of communications from institutions and should promptly bring the matter to the editorial board for action. The editor-in-chief should keep the public informed about any changes in the aims and scope of the journal.

The editor-in-chief should not disclose confidential details about work submissions with editor-in-chiefs of other journals, unless the following requirements are fulfilled:

Such sharing is a necessary part of fulfilling the obligation to prevent and respond to suspected research misconduct
The authors of the work have been informed about the issue at hand, and have not given a response, or the response was not satisfactory
The disclosure is limited to journals which are suspected of having been targeted by the research misconduct at hand, or are believed to have pertinent information of the case at hand.
The recipient editor-in-chief is notified about the sensitive nature of the information.

The amount of disclosed information should be limited to the minimum required. The shared information should be factual, while avoiding conjecture and speculation.

Further reading

Sharing of Information Among Editors-in-Chief Regarding Possible Misconduct, by COPE

Join

If you are interested in becoming an editorial board member, you need to abide by the following:

You should be willing to have your full name displayed online as seen in the list of editorial board members. Affiliations should be stated as well.
You should be familiar with the purpose and structure of the journal, as well as its Bylaws. It is also recommended to be familiar with external guidelines by which the journal abides:

ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication: [1]
COPE code of conduct for journal editors: [2]

You should abide by the confidentiality policies of the journal:

Confidentiality policies

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Most authors have allowed their article submissions to WikiJournal to be open-access in the wiki from the very beginning. Still, the main requirement as a member of the editorial board is to not leak those works that authors wish to be confidential up until publication. Many journals do not accept submissions that have been in the open at any time, and thereby authors may be harmed by premature disclosure of any or all of an article submission's details. Editorial board members therefore keep such works confidential by restricting discussions about such articles in email communications or at a closed group at Google Sites, rather than talk page entries in Wikipedia or Wikiversity. Members of the editorial board must not retain such works for their personal use.

You should generally ask for permission from the sender before posting non-public board emails to a public location such as in this wiki or forwarding to the journal's public email lists (wijoumed googlegroups.com and wikijournal-en lists.wikimedia.org).

Applying

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If you agree with the policies, please apply here. This should include a short summary of:

Medical or biomedical education and experience
Wikipedia or related project experience
Publishing or editorial experience
A statement of acceptance of the policies

All fields are optional, and you do not need to have experience in every area, however some relevant experience is very useful.

Apply to the Editorial Board

The editor-in-chief, or someone appointed by the editor-in-chief, should perform the following tasks:

Monitor the applications page, and let the editorial board know about knew applications.
The identity of the applicant should be confirmed, if not already properly evidenced. It may be done by contacting the person through an email or number from a public website (suggested email template).
Journal members may ask for clarifications or complementary information.
The editorial board will form a consensus of whether to let the applicant join the board.

Onboarding process

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For applicants accepted to the board, the following tasks should be performed:

Mark their application as accepted, by copy-pasting {{subst:WikiJournal accepted board member}} at the bottom of the section.
Contact the new editorial board member via email to inform them (Suggested email template)
Direct-add the new editorial board member to the board's private email group, which will grant them access to the private page only visible to board members
Add them to the Editorial board page using the WikiJournal editor summary template

These tasks can be distributed to any editorial board members of the journal.

Duties of editorial board members

Editorial board members should have a set of talents, experience, and competencies that will best fulfill the needs of the WikiJournal of Medicine. The full names and affiliations of the editorial board members should be displayed online.

Confidentiality

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Editorial board members must keep the confidentiality of works, author or peer reviewer identities, or other privileged information unless permission has been granted to disclose such material or information. Editorial board members must not retain confidential works or information for their personal use.

Scientific misconduct

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Scientific misconduct is defined as intention or gross negligence leading to fabrication of the scientific message or a false credit or emphasis given to a scientist. The editorial board members should inform institutions if they suspect misconduct by their researchers, and provide evidence to support these concerns, such as analysis of text similarity in cases of suspected plagiarism, or evidence of inappropriate image manipulation. They should cooperate with investigations and respond to institutions’ questions about misconduct allegations. They should be prepared to issue retractions or corrections when provided with findings of misconduct arising from investigations. They should correct or retract findings that are invalid or unreliable, both when caused by misconduct and by honest errors. Publications should be retracted if they are evidenced to be generally unreliable, while on the other hand a correction should be made in cases where only a small part of the publication is affected while the majority of findings and conclusions are valid.

Editorial board members should investigate allegations of misconduct targeted at peer reviewers of the journal. However, editorial board members may be obliged to protect the identity of whistleblowers.

In cases of scientific misconduct involving several journals, these journals should cooperate and share information as required to resolve the issues.

Editorial board members should keep communications relating to ongoing misconduct investigations confidential between parties.

Expression of concern

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An Expression of Concern may be used to inform readers about serious allegations likely to affect the reliability or integrity of a work. Expressions of Concern should not be viewed as ‘milder’ versions of retractions. The editorial board should consider issuing an Expression of Concern if:

There is inconclusive evidence scientific misconduct by the authors
There is evidence that the findings are unreliable, but there is no institution or entity available to properly investigate the case
There is reason to believe that an investigation into alleged misconduct either has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive
An investigation is underway but a decision thereof will not be available for a considerable time

Correction

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The editorial board should consider issuing a correction if:

A small portion of an otherwise reliable publication is evidenced to be misleading, particularly if it appears to be an honest error such as a methodological error or a miscalculation
The author list is incorrect. For example, a deserving author may have been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria may have been included

Retraction

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The editorial board should consider retracting a publication if:

There is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of honest error or scientific misconduct such as data fabrication
The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper permission or justification for publication in WikiJournal of Medicine as well
It contains plagiarism
It reports unethical research

Retractions are not usually appropriate in cases where the authorship needs to be changed but there is no reason to doubt the validity of the findings.

A retraction statement must be added in each retraced work. A retraction statements should:

Be clearly identifiable as a retraction statement, including having a title starting "Retraction statement"
Include the reasons for the retraction
Distinguish between cases of misconduct and honest error to encourage researchers to report errors when they occur and ensure no stigma is attached to this.
Be linked to the retracted work and be open access
Clearly identify which work it refers to, by at least title and authors
Be published promptly after the retraction decision
State that the editorial board has made the retraction decision

If a retraction is due to the actions of only some of the authors, the statement should mention this. However, authorship entails some degree of joint responsibility for the entire work, so the author list of a work should not change after retraction.

A retraction statement may undergo amendments by consensus of the editorial board.

Further reading

Duties of the editor-in-chief

WikiJournal User Group/Ethics statement

Full ethics statement, by the WikiJournal User Group