I take as my subject for this editorial the thorny issue of academic standards in journal publishing. Our editorial board recently completed an extensive revision of the ‘Standards for an Acceptable Manuscript’ (AHSE, 2022) and this has been a timely reminder of the different perspectives we bring to quality in academic publishing, as well as our bugbears and blind spots. Not only do I ask all contributors to read and follow these guidelines in preparing a manuscript for submission to Advances, I will take the opportunity this has afforded to reflect on academic standards in academic journals in health professions education in general.

In the English language the idea of standards has its origins in military and monarchical symbolism. The standard of an army or ruler was the declaration of their authority and the rallying point for their forces in battle. Raising a standard asserted the presence and intent of an army, losing a standard symbolised their defeat. The symbolism of the standard was strong; I well remember as a child in England seeing the military flags hung in honour in churches and cathedrals across the country, and I thrilled to Rosemary Sutcliffe’s stories of The Eagle of the Ninth about a lost Roman legion’s standard. This is all very interesting you might think, but what has this to do with academic standards and academic journals?

Our contemporary understanding of a standard is derived from the authority of a ruler and their standard. It was the ruler’s standard that gave authority to the regulation of their realm. Over time, the standard as flag translated to the standard as regulation. Indeed, the standards of the rule of law (the laws themselves and the means by which they are enacted) are central to any stable social system. These include civil codes (how people should behave) and systems of units and measures see Fig. 1. These standards should be accessible, clear in scope and in what constitutes compliance and non-compliance, and clear about the consequences for failing to meet them. Secret standards or standards based on whim or tyranny are no standards at all.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Public standards for length and weight affixed to a wall in the old city marketplace in Bern, Switzerland in 2003

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Of course, in an academic context our standards are not weights or measures, unless the physical weight of a manuscript or the number of words it uses is still considered an intrinsic reflection of its quality. Please note that Advances has no maximum or minim word count, our submissions are judged on other criteria. Standards in academic publishing are conventions defined by the relevant field or discipline and by those administering to or leading these communities. Moreover, academic standards tend to be cast in terms of minimums, you can do more but you cannot do less and still be considered credible.

Common academic standards include those pertaining to research ethics (see for instance the Helsinki declaration World Medical Association, 2013) and professional concerns such as plagiarism, misrepresentation, and authorship, the latter being well-addressed by the ICMJE’s guidelines. (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, 2021) More specific academic standards pertain to different paradigms or disciplines. For instance, in health professions education we do not have the long lists of contributing authors seen in many biomedical sciences journals. Moreover, as a (more-or-less) applied field, health professions education is where paradigms, communities, and cultures intersect (or sometimes collide) such that which standards should apply is not always clear. Should, for instance, the principles of healthcare’s concept of primum non nocere (first do no harm) also apply to researchers in health professions education? (Ellaway, 2017) Should the standard of randomized controlled trials as the ‘best’ source of evidence in biomedical research apply to our field? (Cook, 2012) Indeed, to what extent can we or should we have common standards across all journals as opposed to each journal defining its own standards? A mixed economy of standards is the norm; we use common standards where we can and augment those with the standards of particular publishers and journal editorial boards. The result is a patchwork of standards that reflects the patchwork of journals in any given field or discipline.

It should be obvious, but it bears repeating, academic journals are not generic publication engines where any paper can find a home. Each journal is curated by individuals and collectives with particular purposes and values that do not necessarily align with those of other journals. It would be a much less interesting landscape if Advances were like every other journal in the field (and vice versa). In our new standards document we have linked to global standards in areas where there are no field- or journal-specific divergences, and we have augmented these with standards we consider important to the identity and values of this Journal.

So far, so good, but let us delve a little deeper. Why exactly do we need standards, who needs them, and for what purposes? One practical reason for standards is to increase efficiency and coordination. Although editors and reviewers do a lot of work for this journal, they all have many other day jobs, and it helps to have a reference to work to in handling submitted manuscripts. Moreover, editors and reviewers are not standardized entities, nor do we seek to make them so as there is much interpretation and judgment required in undertaking this work. Another reason for publishing our standards for Advances is to orient authors to the identity and culture of the Journal and to guide them in what we are interested in and how they should prepare their manuscripts for submission. While some of our standards are somewhat binary (do this, do not do that), others need to be interpreted according to the specifics of the study, context, or other contingent factors.

A second purpose of journal standards (and one that harks back to the heterogeneity of our editorial board) is to afford conversation and reflection as to what matters to our board members, and from this to seek some level of consensus across our potentially differing paradigmatic perspectives. Although standards could be imposed (depending on the authority and ideology of the Editor in Chief and the compliance of their editors), since science advances most effectively through discussion and testing beliefs and assumptions, journal standards tend to be a lot more credible and robust when developed and negotiated as a group effort. Indeed, this is a core purpose of an editorial board; to critically engage in developing and maintaining the standards for a journal. This should not be a one-off discursive effort; it should be an ongoing commitment to review and revise standards as thinking and understanding develops. Moreover, it should not be a cloistered conversation between a journal’s editors, it should be informed by thinking in the field as a whole and even more broadly in relevant scientific discourses across fields and disciplines.

From a broader perspective, academic standards are also acts of stewardship of scientific integrity. They are lanterns even as we are lantern bearers. However, as science does not have static values, standards can also act as points of contention and change. We might ask therefore, when do our standards change, when should they change, and how do they change? We might fall back on Kuhnian paradigm shifts in this regard; standards persist so long as they are useful and do the job they are intended to do. They change (or should be changed) when their utility and purpose weaken or fail. This in turn requires a watchful and appraising eye on standards and regular tests of their viability and currency. This was a significant driver in our revisions for Advances, we wished to expand the range of issues that reflect the ongoing development of the Journal.

Standards are acts of gatekeeping, ideally protecting and nurturing the quality of research discourse. However, they could all to easily reflect an ethos of control and reactionary thought, in which case we might appeal to higher levels of standards to resolve such acts. Standards that are used to protect or advance the interests of one group over others, such as where one philosophy of science or one methodology is advanced as intrinsically superior to any others, fail on the meta-standards of science as a whole. Standards are therefore axiologies; they are systems of values, ethics, and esthetics, that are (to some extent) a code to guide professional conduct for all involved in academic publishing.

Finally, standards can act as bridges between different stakeholders and schools of thought. In an applied field such as ours there is a tension between talking to those who translate or apply research to educational practice and those who conduct and advance research thinking. There can be many tensions too between and within research paradigms in an applied field (beware the statistics trolls and phenomenology pedants lurking under bridges). Standards are one way to forge a more inclusive and respectful discourse across the many stakeholder groups we work with.

In summary, standards are an essential part of any journal’s identity and function, they shape our relationships with our contributors, our editors, our publisher, and our readers. Standards are also aspirational, and we may, despite our best efforts, not always meet them. As an example, one standard I am concerned with at present is that of processing times for submissions to Advances. The last 2 years saw a significant increase in the number of submissions even as COVID and other disruptions significantly reduced the capacity and availability of our editors and reviewers. I know that they are doing the best they can given their many other commitments, but we continue to struggle to maintain our pre-pandemic standards. I do ask our contributors to bear with us in this regard. I also ask all those involved in or interested in this Journal to read and reflect on our revised standards document. Whether these standards reflect the best of us or the worst I will leave to you to decide.

Call for submissions: special issue on adaptive expertise

The final issue of Advances in 2022 will be a special issue bringing together articles on adaptive expertise across the health professions. While Adaptive expertise is an emerging model in health professions education (HPE), research on adaptive expertise has a long and prolific history in the broader education literature. Adaptive expertise is gaining traction in HPE as the need to prepare learners for an unknown future becomes increasingly urgent. Current research areas include the knowledge and capabilities that underpin the performance of adaptive expertise as well as the learning experiences that support the development of future adaptive experts.

Studies in this special issue may examine the development of adaptive expertise across the education continuum (undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education). They may also investigate the cognitive or social underpinnings of adaptive expertise which could include studies of clinical reasoning, decision-making, situated cognition, professional learning and clinical teaching. Papers exploring the educational implications or efforts to support the development of adaptive expertise through education/pedagogy are welcome. Studies may report novel empirical data and/or theoretical perspectives or reviews. We invite your submissions on this broad topic, which will, of course, need to follow and reflect our standards.