Medical journals rated by importance to clinicians

<body bgcolor="#000000"> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><font face="Arial" size="4">Medical journals rated by importance to clinicians </font></b> </p> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="55%" style="float: right; background-color: #808080; position: relative; left: 8; border: 2 ridge #FFFFFF; padding: 5"> <tr> <td> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><font face="Arial" size="2"><u><b>TOP 20 JOURNALS</b></u>, by number of highly rated papers published in 2000</font>.<font face="Arial" size="2">(Following each journal's title is its total number of highly rated papers, and percentage of papers that were highly rated.) <o:p> </o:p> </font></p> <ol style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; margin-top: 0in" start="1" type="1"> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews*, 422 (95%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Lancet 134 (3.5%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Journal of Clinical Oncology 445 (15.4%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">British Medical Journal, 93 (2.7%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Circulation, 92 (6.8%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Journal of Advanced Nursing, 92 (15.1%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Obstetrics and Gynecology, 88 (18.4%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">JAMA, 87 (4.5%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">New England Journal of Medicine, 83 (5.4%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Archives of Internal Medicine, 81 (13.1%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 76 (10.7%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Pediatrics, 76 (9.4%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">American Journal of Cardiology, 72 (8.5%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 72 (10.2%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Critical Care Medicine, 70 (7.2%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Chest, 66 (7.5%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Stroke, 59 (9.7%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Neurology, 58 (4.3%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">American Journal of Gastroenterology, 56 (2.8%)</font></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <p style="margin-left: -10"><font face="Arial" size="2">Diabetes Care, 55 (10.4%)</font></li> </ol> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><u><b>TOP 5 BY CATEGORY</b></u> <o:p> </o:p> </font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><u>Internal medicine</u><br> New England Journal of Medicine, 25 (16.9%)**<br> JAMA, 25 (16.9%)<br> Lancet, 22 (14.9%)<br> Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews*, 11 (7.4%)<br> Annals of Internal Medicine, 8 (5.4%)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><u><font face="Arial" size="2">General/family practice</font></u><font face="Arial" size="2"><br> JAMA, 18 (12.5%)<br> BMJ, (11.8%)<br> Lancet,17 (11.8%)<br> New England Journal of Medicine, 13 (9.0%)<br> Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews*, 8 (5.6%)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><u><font face="Arial" size="2">General practice - nursing</font></u><font face="Arial" size="2"><br> Qualitative Health Research, 10 (10.4%)<br> Cochrane Database of Systematic Review*, 8 (8.3%)<br> Pediatrics, 8 (8.3%)<br> JAMA, 7 (7.3%)<br> Lancet, 6 (6.3%)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><u><font face="Arial" size="2">Mental health<br> </font></u><font face="Arial" size="2">Archives of General Psychiatry<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">, </span>12 (12.5%)<br> Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews*, 6 (6.3%)<br> American Journal of Psychiatry, 5 (5.2%)<br> British Journal of Psychiatry, 5 (5.2%)<br> JAMA, 5 (5.2%)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2">*A database that publishes systematic quarterly reviews of the literature. For purposes of this study it was considered a separate journal.<br> **In the by-category tables, the criterion used for highly-rated papers was stricter</font></td> </tr> </table> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="1">Posted Sept. 2, 2004 <br> Biomed Central and World Science Staff</font><font face="Arial" color="#FFFFFF" size="2"><b><br> <br> Doctors can't waste time reading articles of little clinical importance. </b></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" color="#FFFFFF" size="2"><b> A study published today in BMC Medicine rates 170 medical journals by number of clinically useful articles that they publish, as assessed by clinicians based on the importance of the findings and soundness of the methodology. </b></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" color="#FFFFFF" size="2"><b>Ann McKibbon of McMaster University, Canada, found that "the majority of important articles for each discipline were sequestered in a small subset of journals." General broad interest titles such as Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, The Lancet and the BMJ featured in the list of the top five most useful titles.<br> <br> "All lists of important journals included both North American and European titles," said McKibbon. She stresses that, "reading choices for clinicians cannot be based on national or discipline boundaries." <br> <br> The researchers assessed over 60,000 articles from 170 journals for their clinical relevance and importance, to decide which articles should be highlighted in four healthcare review publications on internal medicine, general/family practice, nursing and mental health. <br> <br> To be included the articles had to be about the healthcare of humans, have at least one clinically important outcome and contain appropriate statistical analyses. In addition to other selection criteria, the article had to be approved by an editorial group of practicing clinicians who confirmed that the findings were not already known or applied, and that the condition discussed was not a rare one. <br> <br> 3,059 original research articles and 1,073 review articles met the inclusion criteria in eight categories. <br> <br> For the internal medicine review title, ACP Journal Club, four journals provided 56.5% of the content. 53.2% of the content in the mental health title, Evidence-Based Mental Health, was taken from a selection of only nine different journals. <br> <br> The researchers hope that their findings will help clinicians to focus their full text reading. As journals and books are the main source of information for clinicians, it is important that they choose carefully which journals to subscribe to and read. "This decision should not be based on intuition alone," says McKibbon.</b></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" color="#FFFFFF" size="2"><b>The full BMC Medicine paper can be found <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/2/33" target="_top">here</a>.<br> </b></font></p> </body>