WPA activities in the field of publications during the 2017‐2020 triennium

Abstract

During the triennium which is coming to an end, as in the previous ones, the WPA publications were largely dominated by the importance of World Psychiatry, its official journal. The influence of this journal has grown enormously since its launch by Mario Maj at the beginning of his term as WPA Secretary for Scientific Publications, in 2002. Supporting him in his task as Editor of the WPA publications' flagship and in his efforts to lead this journal towards scientific excellence has, since that date, been one of the first priorities of the WPA Action Plans1 and of its Secretaries for Scientific Publications2. To this end, this last triennium focused on an area which we think to be useful: the promotion of World Psychiatry's global dissemination by supporting (or reactivating), as much as possible, its translations in various languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Rus-sian, Spanish). This does not mean, of course, that the WPA calls into question the role of English as the current dominant language of science (among other fields), but that it considers one of its duties to reduce, as much as possible, the obstacle that this linguistic dominance generates to many of our colleagues in the world who do not feel comfortable enough with English. Some of the translations of the journal are being produced regularly (in particular, the Spanish and Russian ones). For others, based essentially on the voluntary commitment of actors from Member Societies, the WPA is looking for a way to increase their sustainability. Considering that, for an organization as international as ours, linguistic diversity is indeed a concern, translation issues have to be considered as well in other types of publications, including books and Internet resources. This question remains to be addressed properly by our organization, but we see some promise in the fact that, based once again on the voluntary efforts of actors from its Member Societies, the WPA has fostered the translation in Russian of various books of its successful Anthology Series: those focusing on German psychiatry, French psychiatry and Russian psychiatry. Concerning the Internet, we recently took advantage of the renewal of the WPA website3 to include documents in languages other than English in the resources it offers. A first step was taken recently with the integration of documents in French among those included in the COVID-19 section of the website. The idea of using more systematically in our website the linguistic flexibility of new technology is still to be discussed more thoroughly by our governance. However, we know already that it would certainly boost the use of our website, helping it to become, more and more, a first line channel to provide reliable global resources to the psychiatric community and its partners. The COVID-19 crisis is showing us that this would be particularly helpful for hot or controversial topics, in an era in which they can so easily be contaminated by rumors and fake news. Another important pending issue of WPA publications is the complexity of their objectives. Beside disseminating, as widely as possible, the scientific advances and recognized good practices in psychiatry, a task so successfully ensured by World Psychiatry, the Secretary for Scientific Publications' Action Plan2 proposed to implement initiatives to address the global inequalities in research visibility and dissemination. Indeed, we believe that it is a duty for the WPA to provide psychiatrists who are less favored by their context with greater opportunities to have their work published and acknowledged. We have to be aware that this problem affects not only researchers from low- and middle-income countries, but also promising colleagues who, even if they work in well-resourced countries, do not do so in contexts that favor regular publications. In that sense, WPA is a scientific association different from any other. We think that its aim should not be limited to the promotion of scientific excellence, but in-clude as well the support to research and publications in least favored contexts, -what-ever the reasons of this disadvantage, either “external” (economic, linguistic, cultural or political) or “internal” (related to the topics addressed, which, in spite of their relevance for psychiatric practice, may some-times be less likely to be published in high impact journals)2. In line with this concern, another objective in this triennium has been the diversification of the WPA publications offer. Given that papers in indexed journals whose language is English are currently the best and most agile way for disseminating the results of scientifically valuable research, of various levels, the WPA launched a project of regular co-sponsored thematic issues in global or regional psychiatric journals4. After a very successful experience with the British Journal of Psychiatry (a thematic issue on psycho trauma initiated by T. Schulze, our Secretary for Scientific Sections5), similar projects are currently in progress in two respected regional journals published in English: the Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry (with a thematic issue on cannabis legalization) and the Asian Pacific Journal of Psychiatry (with a thematic issue on transcultural psychotherapy). Papers for these issues will soon be collected through international calls for papers. Additionally, our plan is to commission, in each of these issues, a review of the state of the art in mental health and psychiatric research and publications in that specific region. In the same spirit, the WPA continues to promote the production of books related to its objectives and resources. In this perspective, a new tradition has been established in each of the World Congresses of this triennium: the organization of a session specifically dedicated to the presentation of new books of the year by one of their authors or editors. The project includes loading these books and their presentation, subsequently, in the publication section of the WPA website (www.wpanet.org).

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