[Message from editors to authors: review articles. How can the scientific and educational results be improved?]

Most biomedical journals include review articles that pretend to provide the readers with an updated, synthetic and critical appraisal of some important topic. These articles are usually written by experts in the topics reviewed. There are no conventional or universally accepted requisites for the formal organization of contents in a review article. This is in contrast with other kinds of original articles. Therefore, to guide the authors on how to improve the review articles to be submitted to Revista Medica de Chile, some recommendations are proposed. These recommendations were based in the editors' experience and in other pertinent publications: 1) The scope and purpose of the review article should be established in the introductory paragraphs; 2) The methodology used in the selection of the literature reviewed and the time span covered by the search, should also be specified; 3) The author of the review article should systematically appraise the validity of the methods employed in the papers reviewed. A similar attitude should be observed with regards to the results, discussions and conclusions. The limitations and inconsistencies found should be pointed out; 4) The author of the review article should state his (her) own conclusions, identifying the solid as well as the weakly established facts; 5) Whenever feasible, a proposal of future lines of research envisioned after reviewing the literature, is commendable; 6) The literary style of the article should be kept as interesting as possible, to motivate the prospective readers; 7) The scope of the specific journal where the author intends to submit the review article, should always be kept in mind.