British, U.S. Journals Are Widely Respected

The most influential medical journals are the Boston-based New England Journal of Medicine, with its tradition of close ties to the Harvard Medical School, and the Lancet, an independent British medical journal with a muckraking tradition.

For basic medical research as well as a broad range of other scientific developments, Science, published by the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, and Nature, an independent British journal, are usually thought to be the world’s preeminent publications.

Other frequently cited medical journals include the Journal of the American Medical Assn., the Annals of Internal Medicine and occasionally more specialized publications, such as Cell, a biology journal and Circulation, a cardiology journal.

Reporters can usually obtain copies of medical journal articles several days in advance of the “publication date,” giving them time to prepare stories. The material is “embargoed” until a set time, such as Wednesday evening 6 p.m. East Coast time for the weekly New England Journal of Medicine, which is dated the next day.

The embargo means that stories based on articles in the journal can first appear on the Wednesday evening network news or in Thursday morning papers. Violations occasionally occur.

Lancet, with a circulation of 42,000, and Nature, with 33,000 subscribers, are successful far out of proportion to the relatively small numbers of paying readers. By comparison, JAMA’S circulation is about 600,000, including seven foreign-language editions.

The New England Journal, published by the Massachusetts Medical Society, has a circulation of about 215,000. The Annals of Internal Medicine, published by the American College of Physicians, has a circulation of 93,000. Science has 157,000 subscribers.

Researchers whose reports are rejected by these journals have thousands of other publications to choose from. Indeed, a physician who wanted to keep up on all the latest happenings in the biomedical world would have to read, understand and commit to memory the contents of over 39,000 articles a week, according to a commentary in the August issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.