The ''Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine'' is a

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

medical journal A medical journal is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that communicates medical information to physicians, other health professionals. Journals that cover many medical specialties are sometimes called general medical journals. History The fi ...

. It is the flagship journal of the

Royal Society of Medicine The Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) is a medical society in the United Kingdom, headquartered in London. History The Society was established in 1805 as Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, meeting in two rooms in barristers’ chambers ...

with full

editorial independence Editorial independence is the freedom of editors to make decisions without interference from the owners of a publication. Editorial independence is tested, for instance, if a newspaper runs articles that may be unpopular with its advertising ...

. Its continuous publication history dates back to 1809. Since July 2005 the

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

is Kamran Abbasi, who succeeded Robin Fox who was editor for almost 10 years.

History

The journal was established in 1806 as the ''Medico-Chirurgical Transactions'' published by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. It was renamed to ''Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine'' in 1907, following the merger that led to the formation of the Royal Society of Medicine and with volume numbering restarting at 1, before obtaining its current name in 1978.

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in

MEDLINE MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering med ...

PubMed PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintai ...

Science Citation Index The Science Citation Index Expanded – previously entitled Science Citation Index – is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and created by Eugene Garfield. It was officially launched in 1964 ...

, EMBASE, CAB International, and

Elsevier Biobase Elsevier BIOBASE is a bibliographic database covering all topics pertaining to biological research throughout the world. It was established in the 1950s in print format as ''Current Awareness in Biological Sciences''. Temporal coverage is fro ...

. According to the ''

Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationby Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters). It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science-Core Colle ...

'', the journal has a 2021

impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...

of 18.000.

Content

The journal describes itself as having "an international and multi-specialty readership that includes primary care and public health professionals". It claims to act as "a forum for debate, education, and entertainment for clinicians interested in UK medicine and relevant international developments and research. The aim of the journal is to influence clinical practice and policy making across the whole range of medicine". Each issue contains original research articles,

editorial An editorial, or leading article (UK) or leader (UK) is an article written by the senior editorial people or publisher of a newspaper, magazine, or any other written document, often unsigned. Australian and major United States newspapers, such ...

review A review is an evaluation of a publication, product, service, or company or a critical take on current affairs in literature, politics or culture. In addition to a critical evaluation, the review's author may assign the work a rating to indi ...

s, and

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

s. The essay section brings together "think pieces" on current medical issues and medical history. The journal also includes

book review __NOTOC__ A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is merely described (summary review) or analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review may be a primary source, opinion piece, summary review or scholarly revie ...

s. Each issue also features a selection of commentaries from the James Lind Library, an online resource for patients and professionals that documents the evolution of fair tests of treatments in health care. In 2006, the journal introduced open peer review, a system in which authors and reviewers know each other's identities on the assumption that this improves openness in scientific discourse. This made it one of the few medical journals in the world with open peer review.

Editions

The journal is published monthly. The full text of each issue is available to subscribers online on the journal's website at the beginning of each month.

Open access

In March 2006 all research articles published, as well as all other content more than three years old, were made available for free online. An agreement with PubMed Central was also announced, in which a digitised archive of the journal and its predecessor would be created, with issues dating back to 1809 available online for free.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Publications established in 1809 SAGE Publishing academic journals General medical journals English-language journals Monthly journals 1809 establishments in the United Kingdom Academic journals associated with learned and professional societies of the United Kingdom Royal Society of Medicine