medical journals and advertising

nowadays medical journals around the world have proven their vital role in communities’ health. nevertheless, one important question is always arising regarding these journals that are whether they should publish any advertisements? the aimed of the present review article was to discuss different issues raised whenever one would like to answer this question. in 2013, the pub med search engine was searched using “medical”, “journal” and “advertising” terms, which should appear in the title of the papers. in the next step it was tried to find out the most related and up-to-date articles for this review study by changing the search approach and/or by studying the references of the retrieved articles. some of the medical journals are mainly dependent on the advertisements of the pharmaceutical companies for the provision of their financial resources. this happens while the adverse effects of such advertisements might have a huge threat on either populations’ health and/or editors’ decisions. medical journals should either prohibit any types of advertisements or try to publish a range of diverse advertisements based on the accurate principals of information disseminations.