You are unlikely to find The Lancet, Thorax or the Journal of the American Medical Association in your doctor's waiting room, but their contents have more impact on your health than the usual lifestyle magazines.
Such journals, where papers are reviewed by other scientists in the same field - are where researchers set out their findings about how diseases occur, which drugs save lives or what surgical procedure is best.
The first scientific journal - Philosophical Transactions - was published 350 years ago this month. It is still produced now - along with thousands of others.
Here are five of the many papers that have transformed medical practice - and people's lives - over the centuries.