Becoming a critical thinker and maintaining high academic integrity is essential in any academic field. There are several reliable sources and database. However, the community of readership must develop assessment skills that would allow them to evaluate further, the credibility of the sources beyond the point of origin. Most importantly, the community of readership should understand how to use the information retrieved and its applicability, and perhaps, whether the information is a ghostwritten information. Fortunately, the percentage of ghostwriting is declining. “In 2008, the overall prevalence of articles with honorary authorship, ghost authorship, or both, was 21.0%, which represented a decrease from 29.1% in 1996” (Bosch, Esfandiari, & McHenry, 2012, para3).

Resources such as the PubMed and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database provides access to several medical, behavioral, biomedical, molecular database, etc. Also, PubMed/NCBI has a broad range of resource capability, and in many cases, the resources are informative and peer reviewed. Furthermore, PubMed contains more than 24 million citations for biomedical articles from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books (PubMed, 2015). The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), which is a part of the Nationals Institute of health (NIH) maintains and manages the PubMed database (PubMed, 2015). The database is an information retrieval system integrated into the Entrez system (PubMed, 2015).

There are other communities of resources, which provides invaluable insight on ethical issues. For instance, Bioethics Forum is a service of the Hastings Center. The Center addresses fundamental ethical issues in the areas of health, medicinal, and the environmental impact of the quality of life (Bioethics, 2013). The Center has four primary goals, which includes interdisciplinary research and education, engagement of a broader audience, collaborative policy development in the scientific community and to strengthen the international dimensions of research (Bioethics, 2013). Bioethics Forum is a useful resource for the current update of scientific information, news, and innovation. Overall, the site covers ethical issues in divers’ biomedical fields.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) is another invaluable resource center. The CMAJ highlights innovative research/ideas aimed at improving the quality of life, globally (CMAJ, 2013). It publishes peer-reviewed clinical research, reviews, and news. The CMAJ database receives 2.2 million unique visitors yearly (CMJ, 2013). The database has been in service for more than 100 years. It has played a vital role in facilitating awareness on health-related issues and medico- social issues such as the sun exposure skin cancer, smoking/lung cancer, contraception, abortion, euthanasia and many others (CMAJ, 2013). More so, there are many other invaluable resources and database that are accessible to communities of readership, but to facilitate informed body of knowledge, the community of readership should extend their scope of synthesis of the information provided.

References

Bioethics. (2013). Bioethics forum. Retrieved from http://www.thehastingscenter. org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=5629&blogid=140

Bosch, X., Esfandiari. B., McHenry, L. (2012). Challenging medical ghostwriting in US Courts. PLoS Med 9(1): e1001163. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001163

Canadian medical association journal (CMAJ). (2013). Canadian medical association journal. Retrieved from http://www. cmaj.ca/site/misc/about.xhtml.

PubMed. (2015). PubMed journals. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed.