The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine is an open peer-reviewed

Open peer review

Open peer review describes a scientific literature concept and process, central to which is the various transparency and disclosure of the identities of those reviewing scientific publications...

 medical journal. It is the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Medicine

Royal Society of Medicine

The Royal Society of Medicine is a British charitable organisation whose main purpose is as a provider of medical education, running over 350 meetings and conferences each year.- History and overview :...

 with full editorial independence

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 clientele....

. its continuous publication history dates back to 1907, although it continues a publication legacy dating back to 1809. The present editor in chief

Editor in chief

An editor-in-chief is a publication's primary editor, having final responsibility for the operations and policies. Additionally, the editor-in-chief is held accountable for delegating tasks to staff members as well as keeping up with the time it takes them to complete their task...

 is Kamran Abbasi

Kamran Abbasi

Kamran Abbasi is a British Pakistani doctor, medical editor, and cricket writer. He is currently editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Formerly, Dr...

, a former deputy and acting editor at BMJ

BMJ

BMJ is a partially open-access peer-reviewed medical journal. Originally called the British Medical Journal, the title was officially shortened to BMJ in 1988. The journal is published by the BMJ Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association...

. Abbasi was appointed in July 2005, following the retirement of Robin Fox who was editor for just under 10 years.

History

The journal commenced publication under its current name in 1978, as a renaming of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, which had itself been in continuous publication since 1907. It thus has a continuous volume numbering dating back to 1908. The Proceedings were established following the amalgamation of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society with a number of other medical bodies into the Royal Society of Medicine in 1907 and preceded by Medico-Chirurgical Transactions

Medico-Chirurgical Transactions

Medico-Chiurgical Transactions is a medical journal published from 1809 to 1907 by the Royal Medical and Chiurgical Society of London.It has been continued as Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine and since then as the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine....

(1807-1907).

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in MEDLINE

MEDLINE

MEDLINE is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care...

/PubMed

PubMed

PubMed is a free database accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health maintains the database as part of the Entrez information retrieval system...

, Science Citation Index

Science Citation Index

The Science Citation Index is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information and created by Eugene Garfield in 1960, which is now owned by Thomson Reuters. The larger version covers more than 6,500 notable and significant journals, across 150 disciplines, from ...

, EMBASE

EMBASE

Embase is an online information source of published literature designed to supportinformation managers and pharmacovigilance in complying with the regulatoryrequirements of a licensed drug. Through its unique and comprehensive content coverage,...

, CAB International

CAB International

CAB International is a not-for-profit inter-governmental organisation based in the United Kingdom....

, and BIOBASE

Elsevier BIOBASE

Not to be confused with BIOBASE , a German publisher of molecular biology databases.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....

. According to the Journal Citation Reports

Journal Citation Reports

Journal Citation Reports is an annual publication by the Healthcare & Science division of Thomson Reuters. It has been integrated with the Web of Knowledge, by Thomson Reuters, and is accessed from the Web of Science to JCR Web. It provides information about academic journals in the sciences and...

, its 2009 impact factor

Impact factor

The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed...

 is 1.402, ranking it 58th out of 132 journals in the category "Medicine, General and Internal".

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

Editorial

An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...

s, review

Review journal

A review journal in academic publishing is a periodical or series that is devoted to the publication of review articles that summarize the progress in some particular area or topic during a preceding period.-Types:Review journals can be divided by...

s, and essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

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

Book review

A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review could be a primary source opinion piece, summary review or scholarly review. It is often carried out in periodicals, as school work, or on the internet. Reviews are also often...

s. Each issue also features a selection of commentaries from the James Lind

James Lind

James Lind FRSE FRCPE was a Scottish physician. He was a pioneer of naval hygiene in the Royal Navy. By conducting the first ever clinical trial, he developed the theory that citrus fruits cured scurvy...

 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 others' 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 of the Royal Society of Medicine 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

PubMed Central

PubMed Central is a free digital database of full-text scientific literature in biomedical and life sciences. It grew from the online Entrez PubMed biomedical literature search system. PubMed Central was developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine as an online archive of biomedical journal...

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.