[Ethics relevance in Brazilian medical journals]

To evaluate the Brazilian journals cited by the four CAPES medical areas, qualified as 'A' national or 'I' international, regarding the relevance given to ethics in the instructions for authors.

The instructions for authors of twenty Brazilian journals were studied and 36 types of ethical concerns were identified allowing the following categorization: I - Ethics in human research; II - Scientific integrity; III - Editorial policy.

The results on Category I show that the most frequent instructions (50%) requires previous approval of the research by a institutional Ethics Committee (CEP), followed by indication on how to cite this approval in the body of the article (35%), plus presentation of a copy of the CEP approval (30%). However, none advert on the importance of the CEP being recognized by the CONEP. On Category II, 55% of the journal require declarations of conflict of interest, and 40% of them inquire about the type of interest; however, all (100%) journal do not mention prevention conflict of interests between authors and peer reviewers, neither on frauds, plagiarisms or data fabrication. Finally, in Category III, 65% of the journals require the authors to transfer publications rights to them, while the remaining 35% do not mention copyright

These results are discussed in relations to the Brazilian present situation regarding ethics in the scientific production of researches using human subjects for the prevention of scientific dishonesty.