When Journal Editors Publish Their Own Articles in Their Own Journals
This commentary addresses the increasingly popular practice of journal editors publishing their own (or their department’s/clinic’s) manuscripts in journals where they exercise ultimate authority over what articles are accepted for publication. Even though they may claim (many, however, don’t even subject their articles to peer review) to do so after walling themselves off from the peer review process of their own submissions, we here argue that—considering that reviewers must assume that editors will end up knowing who reviewed their paper—it is unimaginable that they would reject a paper from the editor who, after all, will decide about all of their future submissions to the journal. We, in addition, argue that editors, moreover, in such cases of self-submission, have an extra ethical obligation to be especially careful in their representations, which includes a duty to give credit to preceding intellectual ownership of ideas, rather than present those as their own.
A large majority of medical journals—in the medical field, all of them—are edited by part-time editors who themselves are often still engaged in research and publish papers. But should they publish those papers in the journals they edit, even if they allegedly remove themselves from the peer review of their papers?
We don’t think so! And neither does Science magazine, which recently dedicated a whole article to a related new phenomenon: guest editors spiking special issues of journals (which have become a prominent feature in many medical journals) with their own articles.¹
This does not mean that editors should be prohibited from publishing editorials of general interest or commentaries on other authors’ articles published in the issue of the journal if they can offer special insights into those papers. David F. Albertini, PhD, the Editor-in-Chief of JARG, for example, does so brilliantly (he is an exquisitely good writer) as an introduction to every issue of his journal (CONFLICT STATEMENT: Albertini, following the CHR’s Norbert Gleicher, MD, the founding Editor-in-Chief of JARG, is a Senior Visiting Scientist at the CHR). Or take Richard Charles Horton, BSc, MB ChB, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, an equally excellent writer who, in most issues of his journal, fills a page with his personal, usually very progressive opinions about cultural, societal, or political issues we quite often disagree with. Or consider H. Holden Thorp, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of all Science journals (the latter two full-time editors), who introduces almost every issue of Science, similar to Horton, offering mostly easily categorizable political commentaries.
But in many journals, and especially in the fertility field, we have seen this happening increasingly more frequently. It has indeed become fashionable for editors to publish their own studies (or “original” clinical opinions) in their own journals, where they have ultimate control over what the journal is publishing.
Nowhere is this trend more apparent than in the Fertility and Sterility family of journals, where this practice seemingly started to become popular under the prior editorial leadership of the mothership, Fertility and Sterility (F&S), which at that point started to emphasize opinion articles over original science contributions. This trend, however, under the current leadership, has only further strengthened. F&S, moreover, restricts certain categories of opinion papers to editors only, having—as we learned—led to paradoxical situations like editors adding their names to publications of colleagues just to make them eligible for publication.
As repeatedly noted before in these pages—mostly due to a flood of papers from China—the number of submissions to medical journals has literally exploded in recent years. Therefore, somewhat counterintuitively, at F&S, opinion articles have in this time period conquered more and more pages from original research articles, obviously further enhancing opinion over science. Quite remarkably, F&S likely also has the largest number of editors and editorial board members of any medical journal, and in some issues, it is truly remarkable to notice how many articles—whether opinion, reviews, or original research articles—list editors and/or editorial board members as authors.
Here is probably a somewhat extreme example of how inappropriate self-publications can be, this time involving one of the three new F&S family journals that only relatively recently came online. At the same time, we want to freely acknowledge that the CHR may be biased in selecting this example (among so many more) for presentation, but since this example, in certain ways, involved the CHR, we just couldn’t help ourselves.
F&S Reports is one of three new journals recently established by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) to join the mothership F&S in a family of F&S journals. Its founding Editor-in-Chief is Richard J. Paulson, MD, a first-generation academic REI of a well-earned excellent reputation who, in the past, has significantly contributed to the infertility field.
He introduced the most recent issue of his journal with an editorial article under the title The problem with calling it ‘unexplained infertility,’ making the important and absolutely correct point that a diagnosis of “unexplained infertility” is in reality an oxymoron—a non-diagnosis.²
This is a point CHR investigators—though with little success—have made for decades in several publications. It is also constantly reaffirmed by how many patients with this principal diagnosis still present to the CHR, often after years of infertility treatments. Moreover, textbooks to this day accept “unexplained infertility” as an infertility diagnosis in up to approximately one-third of patients. A most recent review of the subject³ noted that the latest ASRM guideline on the subject concluded that approximately 15–30% of newly presenting infertile patients after diagnostic workup will end up with this diagnosis.⁴
In his one-page-long editorial, Paulson basically took credit for the idea that, to quote him, “our patients deserve better than (the use of the term/diagnosis) unexplained infertility,” and he does so—despite listing several references—without giving credit or even noting that several authors before him (among them CHR authors) have been making this point for decades.
Which brings us to the argument that if editors cannot help themselves and feel that they must self-publish their wisdom in their own journals, they should at least have the scientific integrity to perform a literature search to determine whether their supposedly brilliant new idea is indeed new. And if—after such a literature search—they still feel comfortable publishing their work product in their own journal, more so than any other author, an editor then has an affirmative duty to give preceding publications the credit they deserve.
To test this “hypothesis,” with Paulson’s editorial, we performed a simple scientific experiment: We asked ChatGPT a simple question (which Paulson, of course, also could have done):
Who argued in the medical literature that “unexplained infertility” is not a real diagnosis?
And here is what made this query so interesting for the CHR. The answer ChatGPT gave us within seconds was as follows:
Yes—there is medical literature in which authors explicitly argue that “unexplained infertility” is not a true or sustainable diagnosis in its own right, and the most widely cited example comes from 2006: In 2006 researchers N. Gleicher and David Barad published a paper titled “Unexplained infertility: Does it really exist?” in the journal Human Reproduction.⁵
In this article they argued that the label “unexplained infertility” is highly subjective and depends heavily on what tests were done (and how thoroughly). Many couples labeled as unexplained actually have underlying conditions—such as endometriosis, subtle tubal disease, immunological infertility, or premature ovarian aging—that were simply not detected with standard investigations. Because of this inconsistency and the reliance on exclusion rather than positive evidence, the authors recommended abandoning “unexplained infertility” as a formal diagnosis and instead improving diagnostic workups to identify the true causes wherever possible.
It took less than a minute to ask the question and receive the answer! And if Paulson had taken a little more time and done a literature search, he would also have found a letter to the editor in The Lancet by CHR investigators from 2018 expressing the same sentiments.⁶
References
Brainard J. Science. January 22, 2026:332.
Paulson RJ. F&S Rep. 2026;7(1):1.
Quaas A, Dokras A. Rev Obstet Gynecol. 2008;1(2):69–76.
Practice Committee of the ASRM. Fertil Steril. 2006;86(5 Suppl):S111–114.
Gleicher N, Barad D. Hum Reprod. 2006;21(8):1951–1955.
Gleicher N, et al. Lancet. 2018;392(10157):1516–1517.