The editors of a drug bulletin aim to produce scientifically valid information, to clarify current scientific consensus, and to help readers to optimise their therapeutic activities in the best interest of the patient.¹

Drug bulletin editing therefore differs from producing a research paper on a scientific experiment. An article for a drug bulletin should be edited to be:

• accurate, providing a counterweight to misleading or incomplete information;
• comparative, helping the reader to choose and decide;
• transparent, showing clearly how and why conclusions are drawn;
• adapted to the needs of potential readers;
• locally relevant;
• easy to read and to retrieve in everyday practice.

Writing is not the central part of this process. It is more important to define objectives clearly, to develop a conceptual framework for an article, to search for scientific evidence and to set up an efficient quality control system. The essential tool in such a process is not the computer or the printer, but the editors’ brains and their ability to take readers’ needs into account, whether or not those needs are explicitly expressed.