It's good news that CMAJ was in fifth place among the world's general medical journals in 1999 (after the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The Lancet and BMJ), when ranked according to impact factors provided by the Institute for Scientific Information.1
There's additional good news. Of these 5 journals, only BMJ and CMAJ are, at present, freely and publicly available online. Data for October 2000 from the Web site of Free Medical Journals.com (www.freemedicaljournals.com) indicate that, of the free general medical journals, CMAJ is in second place when ranked according to impact factor. It will be very interesting to see whether the impact factors of highly ranked free medical journals increase over the next few years, in comparison with the impact factors of journals that are not free.
Signature
James E. Till
Professor Emeritus Department of Medical Biophysics University of Toronto Toronto, Ont.
Reference
- 1.CMAJ's impact factor improves. CMAJ 2000; 163(9):1182.