JAMA Internal Medicine

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  JAMA Internal Medicine has been tracking the inner workings of the human body since 1908, making it one of the longest-running journals in American medicine. In 2022, it earned an impact factor of 39.0, placing it 7th out of 168 journals in the category of general and internal medicine. That ranking signals something worth understanding: how did a publication founded over a century ago earn such standing among its peers, and who is steering it today? The story runs from a Chicago-based archive to a nationally recognized publication under the American Medical Association, and the title on the masthead has changed four times along the way.

• 2. A Century of Names

  ›

  In 1908, the journal launched under the name Archives of Internal Medicine, with Chicago identified right in its official ISSN listing as the publication's home. That original title held for more than four decades. By 1950, the American Medical Association had claimed closer ownership of the publication, and the name shifted to A.M.A. Archives of Internal Medicine, a label it kept through 1960. The middle of the twentieth century brought another rename, dropping the AMA prefix and returning to the simpler Archives of Internal Medicine, which remained on the masthead from 1960 through 2012. Each name change reflects a quiet institutional negotiation between the journal's identity as an independent scientific archive and its home within organized American medicine. The final rename, to JAMA Internal Medicine in 2013, folded the publication explicitly into the JAMA family of journals, sharing a brand with one of the world's most recognized medical titles.

• 3. Scope and Standing

  ›

  The journal covers all aspects of internal medicine, from cardiovascular disease and geriatrics to infectious disease, gastroenterology, endocrinology, allergy, and immunology. That breadth places it at the crossroads of nearly every specialty a hospital internist would encounter. The 2022 impact factor of 39.0, recorded by Journal Citation Reports, is a measure of how often other researchers cite its articles. Ranking 7th in a field of 168 journals in its category means the work published there circulates widely through medical literature. The journal is indexed in Index Medicus, MEDLINE, and PubMed, the three major databases that clinicians and researchers use to search for evidence-based guidance.

• 4. Leadership and Continuity

  ›

  On the 1st of July 2023, Sharon K. Inouye of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital took over as editor-in-chief. She succeeded Rita F. Redberg of the University of California, San Francisco. The transition from Redberg to Inouye connects two major academic medical centers on opposite coasts, Harvard in Boston and UCSF in San Francisco, reflecting the national reach of a journal published monthly under the banner of the American Medical Association. Inouye's institutional affiliation with both Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital places the editorial leadership at the intersection of research and clinical care, which is the precise territory JAMA Internal Medicine has occupied since its founding year of 1908.