Comparison of Review Articles about Drugs



Comparison of Review Articles about Drugs

Introduction

We reviewed Drugs articles that focused on the diagnosis or treatment of a medical condition published between January 1 and December 31, 1998, in the 5 leading peer-reviewed general medical journals and high-circulation throwaway journals. Reviewers independently assessed the methodologic and reporting quality, and evaluated each article's presentation and readability. Clinical relevance was evaluated independently by 6 physicians.

Analysis

Large circulations' and readership polls suggest that throwaway journals are more widely read than some peer-reviewedjournals in the same subject areas. Despite their popularity, throwaway journals are judged disparagingly as a source of “instant cookbook medicine and journals that are given away.4 Indeed, throwaway journal Drugs articles' are seldom peer reviewed and are almost never cited in the medical literature. They are considered to be of poor quality compared with peer-reviewed journal Drugs articles, despite the lack of formal quality comparisons.' Given the success of throwaway publications, we sought to understand why so many physicians read them. We assessed the quality, presentation, readability, and clinical relevance of review Drugs articles published in a sample of peer-reviewed journals compared with those published in a of throwaway journals.

We identified all review Drugs articles that focused on the diagnosis or treatment of medical conditions published in 5 lead- ing peer-reviewed general medical journals (Annals of Internal Medicine, BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine) and the throw- away journals with the highest circulation Patient Care, and Postgraduate Medicine)

between January 1 and December 31, 1998. A 3-stage process was used to identify clinically relevant review Drugs articles for inclusion in our sample. First, we identified sections of each peer-reviewed journal that published review Drugs articles. Throwaway journals have no designated review sections; therefore, we identified sections most likely to contain review Drugs articles. Second, we excluded all review article subsections where the primary focus was not on the clinical diagnosis or treatment of a specific medical condition or sections that published only case studies. Two authors (A.M.B. and P.A.R.) excluded 68 peer-reviewed and 72 throwaway journal Drugs articles that did not meet our inclusion criteria. Our cohort included 394 review Drugs articles.

Each article was classified as either a systematic or a nonsystematic review. To identify systematic reviews, we used an approach based on the comprehensive search strategy outlined by Hunt and McKibbon. Two trained reviewers independently evaluated methodologic and reporting ...