If accessing relevant evidence is the question, are medical journals still the answer? – Cancerworld

"With social media platforms, search algorithms and online research tools designed to let people upload, share, find and comment on information in real time, Sophie Fessl asks: why are we still reliant on a 350-year-old model for disseminating medical research?

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Getting new evidence from clinical trial to the practising doctor requires two pieces to click: researchers need to publish their findings, and the doctor has to read them. Since the 17th century, the journal has been the means for this communication. Some processes, such as peer review, evolved to be crucial parts of journal publishing. With the internet revolutionising how we communicate, these ‘print-native’ processes are set to be overhauled by their ‘web-native’ counterparts – or have been already. '[…] the Web has irrevocably changed our information environment – it is no longer the habitat the journal evolved in,' publishing futurist Jason Priem argues in his opinion piece published in Nature (2013, 495:437–40). Whether or not the journal as we know it now survives in the digital age, the way a clinician seeks information from the literature may change dramatically in the future."