Scientific Editing in Bosnia and Herzegovina: a personal journey
The most encouraging aspects of being an editor are respect and honour, which can be achieved by devoted and highly professional or qualified work. Qualification in scientific editing is a life-long achievement and a result of the struggle for objectivity and clarity of publications. On the road towards qualification, an editor might find many supportive friends and “foes”. The latter is inevitable when a journal editor reaches a certain level of proficiency and becomes more selective about what is published.During my lifetime, editorial work has been an inseparable part of my professional activities on many occasions. Surprisingly for most, I learned how to edit in elementary school, then improved my editorial skills after high school, back in the early 1970s. I was involved in editing a school newspaper in grammar and high school, and, as a result, became one of the state’s leading experts on standards of writing in the Bosnian language.In every young person’s life there comes a moment when he/she must make a crucial decision. For me it was the choice of undergraduate studies at Sarajevo University. Despite my parents’ advice to choose only one course, I was thinking about studying medicine, political sciences and journalism, without giving up writing, my “true love”. In the end, I opted for medicine and writing. As a student, I paid much attention to rare and unique medical cases, trying to produce case reports. Luckily, I was given a chance to edit a newsletter for students in 1974. It was a popular and highly informative journal