Objective: to analyze scientific evidence available in health literature on ethics, standardization and biometric indicators.
Method: an integrative review carried out in August 2016, on the databases: National Library of Medicine, Literatura Latino-Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde (Latin-American and Caribbean Literature on Health Sciences), and on the library Scientific Electronic Library Online. The review included primary articles on: ethics, standardization and biometric indicators, in Portuguese, English, or Spanish; and excluded studies that were not found as full texts, as well as opinions, commentary, reviews, theses, and dissertations. For the evaluation of the articles, it was used evidence levels from one to five.
Results: eight articles were included, with scientific evidence levels 4 and 5: scientific productivism, production evaluation systems, internationalization, impact factor, classification of journals, and adequate and inadequate practices for publication.
Conclusion: it was verified the need for publications with higher evidence levels so that Brazilian journals can follow international standards dealing with research ethics.