Table 5.

The Central Role of Medical Journals and Editors for Retaining Transparency and Quality of Evidence

Proposed Role of Medical Journals and Editors
•Powerful agents for counteracting medical misinformation
•Should join forces to achieve global consensus and take action on matters of public interest
•Could provide guidance and regulation for information diffusion in the media
•Social media platforms (eg, Twitter) can be used to diffuse medical information (upon further regulation – see also Table 3 & the Figure), but they should by no means replace a full, thoroughly reviewed work
•Reward systems should place more emphasis on long-term scientific achievements, rather than immediate online rewards
•Clinical impact metrics should be created. For example, by conducting surveys with clinicians from a certain area of expertise to gather information on how much they used a research article for their clinical practice
•Medical journals should reduce incentives on publications by “press release.” For example, publications that have been previously presented in media without robust data should no longer be considered suitable for publication in a medical journal