Embargoes On Articles in Scientific Journals
News embargoes are commonly applied on information of health-related news regarding upcoming medical journal articles. All major medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Lancet, have publication embargoes.
The JAMA embargo probably dates back to the editorship of Morris Fishbein, from 1924 to 1949, and holds until 15:00 Central Time on the day before the cover date of the issue. Journalists who agree to not publish (in print, on television, on radio, or via Internet) until that time the information contained in a manuscript to be published by the journal receive advance copies of the journal by mail during the week before publication. For selected articles, press releases and news release videos are also prepared by science writers and released to journalists during that week.
The reasons given for such embargoes are twofold. First, they enable journalists to produce more comprehensive and accurate coverage, as the embargo provides time in which they can research the background to a story and thus publish "backgrounders" along with the story's release. Second, they enable doctors and scientists to receive and to analyze medical studies before the general public does, enabling them to be better informed when called upon to comment or to react by journalists or by patients. However, some object to the medical news embargo system, claiming that it is driven by profit motives on the parts of the medical journals.
Read more about this topic: News Embargo
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