Self-publishing in the history of medicine: The paradoxical case of Edward Jenner's science-changing monograph (1798)

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, self-publishing is regarded as the act of arranging or paying for one's ‘own book to be published, rather than having it done by a publisher’. Whether it be a fictional story or a scientific study, such an option is often considered to be the very last resort for authors who have previously failed to find a (respectable) publisher. In contemporary scientific research, self-publishing can happen to be conflated with other editorial phenomena such as predatory publications, which, while retaining some aspects of the traditional publishing business, are in fact self-publishing platforms. Such a habit, now widespread worldwide, has raised concerns within the scientific community due to the nature of unverified pseudo-scientific information that can get the appearance of a respectable publication, when in fact they may just harm the public perception of science and lead to uncontrolled side effects. This is a particularly sensitive issue when dealing with health-related topics – and all the more so when such predatory publications end up indexed in reputed databases such as Pubmed – like the potential risks of vaccinations or drugs, a topic worth investigating, but much too often abused by individuals and organisations launching ungrounded accusations against some of the pillars of modern medical thought and practice.