• Y Charpak and C Chastang.
• Presse Med. 1984 Sep 29;13(33):1984-9.

AbstractMedical journals play an important role in the diffusion of scientific medical information. We tried to evaluate the French medical journal, La Presse Médicale, and to compare it with the New England Journal of Medicine. We reviewed all the original articles published in 1982 (207 articles In La Presse Medicale and 152 articles in the New England Journal of Medicine): specialties, methodologies used in the studies, environment (number of authors, geographical origin, institutional origin, number and language of references, number of subjects included in the studies). The articles in both journals concerned virtually the same specialties, more than 50% of the articles dealing with the following: cancerology, cardiology, infectious diseases, endocrinology, gastroenterology. Many specialties including highly prevalent diseases were underrepresented in both journals. When treating the same kind of problems, different methodologies were used: faced with a therapeutical problem, authors in La Presse Medicale used mostly non controlled evaluations (46%, 30 articles), and few randomized controlled trials (12%, 8 articles). On the other hand, authors in the New England Journal of Medicine used mostly randomised controlled trials (56%, 36 articles), and less non controlled evaluations (26%, 16 articles). Most references were in English, even in La Presse Medicale, in which 76% of all references were not in French, and 14% of all articles had no French references. In conclusion, this study shows differences between the two journals: in particular, the methodologies used by the authors in La Presse Medicale were less pertinent than those used by the authors in the New England Journal of Medicine. This finding is important with regard to the formation of and information given to the French speaking physicians, and a strong reaction from the editors and physicians concerned is desirable.

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