Editors, Reviewers, Rag-Pickers, and Garbage-Handlers:... : Medical Journal of Dr. D.Y. Patil University (2024)

The key to the quality and efficiency of any work depends on workers finding meaning in their work. No amount of incentive or salary can achieve what a little job satisfaction can achieve.^[1] Professional and personal growth is enhanced by doing a job that has meaning and gives joy to the person.^[2] Having said this, can work which is considered “dirty or drudgery” bring meaning and joy to those who find themselves trapped in such work? This category of work is the fate of rag-pickers, garbage-handlers.and journal editors and reviewers.

While some may choose such jobs by choice out of a feeling of altruism to society, for instance, editors, who are paid inadequately, if at all, in most countries, and reviewers, who are never paid, for others it may be a matter of making a living. There are many similarities between the work of rag-pickers and garbage-handlers on one hand and that of journal editors and reviewers on the other. How do people trapped in such jobs find meaning in their work?

We can start with the challenges faced by rag-pickers and garbage-handlers to make their work meaningful. If they can find a way out from the dirt and drudgery there lies hope for editors and reviewers. Shepherd et al.^[2] carried out a study among rag-pickers and garbage-handlers in Mumbai. The study gave the researchers important insights on how people doing the lowliest of jobs find meaning in their jobs and lives. While earlier investigators had focused on positive feelings in studies of job satisfaction, the approach of Shepherd and his colleagues was to study both the positives and negatives. They found that rag-pickers and garbage-handlers were distinctly ambivalent about their jobs—they had feelings of extreme helplessness along with a set of positive meanings such as survival, destiny, and hope which led to embodied wisdom and resilience.

Rag-pickers and garbage-collectors are vital for public health, which makes their work meaningful. They weed out harmful substances that can affect health by contaminating water, food, and the environment or attracting vectors of disease such as insects, rodents, and other animals. Any lapse invites the wrath of their supervisors and common citizens while the good work goes unnoticed.

Editors and reviewers face a similar predicament. Their work is taken for granted and any perceived lapse attracts the presumptuous judgments of the ignorant. Like rag-pickers, editors often feel overwhelmed and helpless and have feelings of ambivalence towards their work. While rag-pickers and garbage-collectors strive to prevent contamination of the physical environment with harmful waste, editors, and reviewers take pains to avoid contamination of the academic environment with useless, or worse, misleading research.

Rag-pickers and garbage-collectors often are unable to cope up with the volume of waste and litter generated by irresponsible citizens. Editors and reviewers face a similar challenge. They struggle with the volume of manuscripts they have to vet in the “publish or perish” environment—a culture of academic anarchy unleashing a barrage of inane papers.

After hurricanes rags and garbage pile up adding to the woes of rag-pickers and garbage-collectors, and, despite their best efforts, some rubbish is likely to slip through and contaminate the environment. Similarly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the litter of papers piled up posing a challenge to ensure quality control and many slipped through the editorial scrutiny contaminating the academic environment with an “alarming and exceptionally high,” rate of papers on COVID-19 being retracted.^[3] The year 2023 also witnessed a new record of over 10,000 research papers getting retracted!^[4]

It is a challenge for editors and reviewers to separate the wheat from the chaff from the clutter and try to find buried gems among this academic garbage. Similar to the strategy of waste management where households are advised that hazardous wastes are not thrown in with routine waste to make the task of garbage collectors easier, it has been suggested that every manuscript submitted to a journal should come with a digital certificate stating that the authors’ institution (s) has completed a series of checks to ensure research integrity.^[5]

Facts are stranger than fiction. The rag-picker and the barterer of words converged in the person of José Alberto Gutiérrez who is known as the “Lord of the Books.”^[6] Gutiérrez, a garbage collector started collecting discarded books from wealthy neighborhoods to build up a makeshift library for poor children. He has been doing this for over 20 years since he found Leo Tolstoy’s classic Anna Karenina among a heap of garbage. After finding this gem of a book he never looked back. His collection over the two decades overflows every room of his house in a low-income neighborhood. He has converted it into a community library and named it, “The Strength of Words.”

This rags-to-riches story, alas of words only, should inspire all rag-pickers, garbage-collectors, editors, and reviewers particularly those who value knowledge over wealth.

For the less altruistic, it is worth considering more incentives for all these essential workers who are striving to keep the physical and academic environment uncontaminated including editors and reviewers.^[7]

Data availability statement

Not applicable.

Author contribution

AB was responsible for conceiving, writing, revising, and final approval of the editorial.

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