the quality and validity of publications on traditional medicine in the light of journalsʹ policies

Herbal medicines have a great impact on the pharmaceutical industry and drug discovery. a significant budget and time are spent on herbal research and phytotherapy. however, achievements for the management or treatment of diseases using traditional medicine are not very commensurate with the extensive ongoing herbal research. the present article aims to show how journals' policy can help researchers to improve the quality of their research and so the reproducibility and reliability of published results. the current standards of publications on herbal research common between most journals publishing biomedical, traditional and herbal research have been examined. to improve the quality and validity of final publications, journals with herbal related scopes need to consider some criteria in addition to their existing policies. accordingly, the rule of three has been introduced as the necessary minimum information for publications on herbal research. rule one focuses on plant identification. the focus of the proposed rules two and three is on the details of materials, methods, and design of herbal research. with the acceptance of the rule of three as critical principles for considering an article for possible publication or rejection, the validity, quality, and reproducibility of literature on traditional medicine and so the speed of natural-based drug development will be improved.