Why are the impacts of the leading medical journals so similar and yet so different? Item-by-item audits reveal a diversity of editorial material

The following articlel was published in the Anndr of Internal Medicine last year and is reprinted here in an abridged form with the permission of that journal, Using the 1981 and 1982 Science Citation Index@ (SCP ) and other citation data, we examined in detail the top 5 of 78 general and internal medicine joumds-Annals of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal, i%e Journal of the American Medical Association, Zhe Lancet, and l?se New England Journal of Medicine. An ~icle-by-article audit enabled us to differentiate the impact of different types of editorial material. For example, letters play an important role in current medical literature. We now have 1985 data available for the journals listed in the article. Despite the passage of severaf years, however, the impact, citation, and immediacy rankings have not changed significantly. Consequently, we have chosen not to publish the new data here, but rather have left the originaf tables in place. In addition, to save space, we provide data for only the top 40 journals. Most of these data are available by referring to the Journal Citation Reports” volumes of the 1985 SCI. Thkty-six of the 40 journals are currently covered in the Clinical Medicine dition of Current