Peer reviewed journals, science and social justice

"For the last 2 years, Tobacco Control has benefited from opportunities to enhance connections with authors and potential authors from low/middle income countries (LMICs), through a special grant provided by the Bloomberg Foundation. The grant, based on a proposal initiated by Editor Emeritus Simon Chapman, provided funding for several LMIC introductory workshops on writing for the journal, additional open-access pages in the journal devoted to papers and news from LMICs, and increased editorial support and mentoring for authors with good ideas but little or no experience in writing for a peer reviewed journal....However, an unanticipated side effect of these LMIC-focused initiatives has been the interesting conversations they have stimulated among the senior editors of the journal, and the ways in which they have expanded our perspectives on our roles as editors and mediators of discourse in a field where both science and social justice are at issue...."