The Shifting Sands of Medical-Scientific Publishing: The Rise of Reviews

A journal review article is secondary research, and its hallmarks are a specified research topic and a defined methodology. It carries potentially higher readership and archiving value. An analytical review like a systematic review and meta-analysis serves to string together a coherent message, which individual studies cannot, or expose the persistent uncertainty on specific issues due to conflicting observations and conclusions in them. They demand rigor in analytic dissection and laborious preparation. Narrative and scoping reviews, on the other hand, are short summaries or maps of the published literature and, by their nature, less rigorous exercises with ease of data collection compared to data generation and provide co-authorship opportunities at multi-institutional and international levels. This chapter outlines the principles and purpose of writing journal review articles, their place in the world of scientific literature, and then examines the current pattern in publishing in terms of adherence to the correct principles and their place and value and possible motivation in that context. It also looks at the potential influence of current Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology in related areas.