Stephen Lock

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Stephen Penford Lock

FRCP (born 8 April 1929) is an English haematologist and editor who served from 1975 to 1991 as editor-in-chief of the UK medical journal, the British Medical Journal, known since 1988 as the BMJ.[1] A prominent scholar of the peer review process, he coined the term "journalology" to refer to the scientific study of the academic publishing process.[2] In 1990, Eugene Garfield described him as "an elder statesman of biomedical editing".[3]

Lock was educated at

haematology. He worked at St Bartholomew's Hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children, and other hospitals before joining the BMJ. He originally began working at the BMJ in 1964 as an assistant editor, and was promoted to the positions of senior assistant editor and deputy editor before becoming editor-in-chief in 1975.[3]

In 1982, while editor of the BMJ, he introduced its Christmas edition, which contained many humorous articles, as well as interesting historical stories about medicine. This light-hearted edition has since become an annual tradition,[4] although in recent years the humorous elements have been less emphasized. Lock also changed the journal's peer review system by introducing a "hanging committee", consisting initially of two clinicians and two of the journal's official editors; the committee was responsible for choosing papers to publish in the BMJ from a pool of submissions recommended from outside reviewers. The term "hanging committee" reflected the kind of activities that an art gallery would undertake in deciding whether to hang particular works of art.

Lock was a co-founder, with Edward Huth, of the Vancouver Group (later the

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors), and a former president of the European Association of Science Editors.[5]

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-19-954088-4
    .
  2. ^ Couzin-Frankel, Jennifer (18 September 2018). "'Journalologists' use scientific methods to study academic publishing. Is their work improving science?". Science. Retrieved 4 June 2019.
  3. ^ a b Garfield, Eugene (15 January 1990). "Stephen P. Lock on "Journalology"" (PDF). Current Comments. 13: 19–21.
  4. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 3 June 2019.
  5. S2CID 62745641
    .

Further reading


Stub icon

This United Kingdom biographical article related to medicine is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stephen_Lock&oldid=1174162049"