At last year's meeting of the World Association of Medical Editors in Prague the major Anglo-Saxon medical journals presented themselves as being independent from outside pressures. Their main aim was to improve quality and the reliability of published papers.

During the discussions there were only hints that continental medical journals have more problems. But many of them struggle to retain editorial independence, and some used the meeting of the German society for internal medicine to voice their complaints. A recently published protocol by the society emphasises the importance of medical journals for science and education and sets out the peculiar position in which many continental medical journals find themselves.

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