The ''Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine'' is a peer-reviewed medical journal. 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’ chamber ...

with full editorial independence. 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 ...

Kamran Abbasi Kamran Abbasi is the editor-in-chief of the ''British Medical Journal'' (''BMJ''), a physician, visiting professor at the Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College, London, editor of the '' Journal of the Royal Society of Med ...

, 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 medic ...

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 maintain t ...

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 and ...

, EMBASE,

CAB International CABI (legally CAB International, formerly Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux) is a nonprofit intergovernmental development and information organisation focusing primarily on agricultural and environmental issues in the developing world, and the c ...

, 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 Collec ...

'', 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, editorials,

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 James Lind (4 October 1716 – 13 July 1794) was a Scottish doctor. He was a pioneer of naval hygiene in the Royal Navy. By conducting one of the first ever clinical trials, he developed the theory that citrus fruits cured scurvy. 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 PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. As one of the major research databases developed by the National Center fo ...

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