This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Spanish PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Journalology/ Peer Review/ Authorship  • JAMA Patient Page  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Medical journals are publications that report medical information to physicians and other health professionals. With the development of electronic publishing, many medical journals now have Web sites on the Internet, and some journals publish only online. A few medical journals, like JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, are considered general medical journals because they cover many fields of medicine. Most medical journals are specialty journals that focus on a particular area of medicine. The April 19, 2006, issue of JAMA includes an article about use of medical journal articles by doctors. This Patient Page is based on one previously published in the June 5, 2002, issue of JAMA.

TYPES OF ARTICLES

• Research articles report the results of research studies on a range of topics varying from the basic mechanisms of diseases to clinical trials that compare outcomes of different treatments. Research articles on important topics may be covered . . . [Full Text of this Article]

RELATED ARTICLE

Second-Order Peer Review of the Medical Literature for Clinical Practitioners
R. Brian Haynes, Chris Cotoi, Jennifer Holland, Leslie Walters, Nancy Wilczynski, Dawn Jedraszewski, James McKinlay, Richard Parrish, K. Ann McKibbon, and for the McMaster Premium Literature Service (PLUS) Project
JAMA. 2006;295(15):1801-1808.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT