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Arch Ophthalmol. 2004;122:1380-1382.

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

Almost 19 years ago, my friend and colleague, Dan Finkelstein, wrote an editorial for the ARCHIVES on this same subject,¹ taking the same position that I am endorsing here. Although I do not want to state unequivocally that tabloids or "throwaway" journals have no value, I do wish to emphasize that their major raison d'être is as a medium for advertising and not to communicate new scientific knowledge.

Tabloids are medical publications in newspaper form, which appear to be most common in ophthalmology. They are a subset of the larger category of "throwaways." As noted by Rochon et al² and Rennie and Bero,³ "‘throwaway' journals are characterized as journals that contain no original investigations, are provided free of charge, have a high advertisement-to-text ratio, and are non-society publications. . . . [they] are seldom peer-reviewed and are almost never cited in the medical literature." The article by Rochon et al² . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Robert N. Frank, MD
From Kresge Eye Institute, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, Mich.

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