Medical Journal of Australia

'Australian Medical Journal' redirects here. It is not to be confused with "Australasian Medical Journal".

The Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 22 times a year. It is the official journal of the Australian Medical Association, published by Wiley on behalf of the Australasian Medical Publishing Company.

Medical Journal of Australia

Discipline	Medicine
Language	English
Edited by	Virginia Barbour
Publication details
Former name(s)	Australian Medical Journal, Intercolonial Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery, Intercolonial Medical Journal of Australasia
History	1856–present
Publisher	Wiley on behalf of the Australasian Medical Publishing Company (Australia)
Frequency	22/year
Open access	Hybrid
Impact factor	11.4 (2022)
Standard abbreviations ISO 4 (alt) · Bluebook (alt) NLM (alt) · MathSciNet (alt )
ISO 4	Med. J. Aust.
Indexing CODEN (alt · alt2) · JSTOR (alt) · LCCN (alt) MIAR · NLM (alt) · Scopus
CODEN	MJAUAJ
ISSN	0025-729X (print) 1326-5377 (web)
OCLC no.	925316442
Links
Journal homepage Journal page at publisher's website Online access Online archive

The journal publishes editorials, original research, guideline summaries, narrative reviews, perspectives, medical education, reflections, and letters.^[1] The full text of every issue since January 2002 is available online.^[2]

History

Early origins

The journal was established in 1856, when communication between Australian states and other English-speaking nations entailed long delays.^[3] The journal was both a platform for Australian medical research, as well as educational reviews summarising research done overseas. It has since been renamed several times:^[3][4]

• Australian Medical Journal (1856–1895)
• Intercolonial Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery (1895–1896)
• Intercolonial Medical Journal of Australasia (1896–1909)
• Australian Medical Journal (1910–1914)
• Medical Journal of Australia (1914–present, with volume numbering restarting at 1)^[5]

MJA today

The current editor of the MJA - appointed in 2023 - is Virginia Barbour.

Elsevier

In 2015, then editor-in-chief Stephen Leeder was suddenly removed after criticising the decision to outsource production of the journal to the global publishing giant Elsevier.^[6] Leeder's concerns revolved around an incident in 2009 when Elsevier accepted payments from pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. to publish journals such as the Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine, which had the appearance of peer-reviewed academic works but were in fact promoting Merck.^{[7][8][9][10]} Following the decision to sack Leeder, all but one of the journal's editorial advisory committee resigned and wrote to Australian Medical Association president Brian Owler asking him to review the decision.^[11][12]

Nicholas Talley succeeded Stephen Leeder as editor-in-chief in September 2015^[13] and the editorial advisory group was subsequently reconstituted.^[14]

Wiley

From January 2019, the journal is published by Wiley.^[15] Print distribution remains with the Australasian Medical Publishing Company and editorial direction and decisions remain with the journal.^[15]

Publishing and access

Having previously published under a subscription model, the journal changed in January 2012 to make all of its research articles free to read online.^[16] The journal converted to a hybrid model in January 2019: Authors can either pay an article processing fee to publish fully open access (gold open access) or archive the submitted version of their article in online repositories (green open access).^[16] In order to demonstrate commitment to Australian Indigenous health and health awareness, the journal makes all Indigenous health articles free to access without charging authors.^[16]

MJA InSight+

MJA InSight+ is a newsletter for medical professionals produced by the MJA. Articles are primarily written by in-house journalists and doctors. It has the largest medical-newsletter subscription membership in Australia.

MJA InSight is published by the Australasian Medical Publishing Company, the publishers of the MJA. The newsletter informs clinicians of key developments and research in medicine and health.^{[17][18] [19]}

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in:

• CAB Abstracts^[20]
• CINAHL^[21]
• Current Contents/Clinical Medicine^[22]
• Current Contents/Life Sciences^[22]
• Embase^[23]
• Index Medicus/MEDLINE/PubMed^[24]
• Science Citation Index^[22]
• Scopus^[25]

According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal had a 2022 impact factor of 11.4, ranking it 17th out of 167 in the category "General and Internal Medicine".^[26]

See also

• List of medical journals

References

1. "MJA instructions for authors - types of articles published by the MJA". Medical Journal of Australia. Australasian Medical Publishing Company. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
2. "Information about the Medical Journal of Australia". Medical Journal of Australia. Australasian Medical Publishing Company. Retrieved 2008-01-08.
3. Eadie, Mervyn J. (2000). The flowering of a waratah: the history of Australian neurology and of the Australian Association of Neurologists. Sidney, NSW: Libbey. ISBN 9780861966066. OCLC 47137082.
4. "Australian Medical Journal 1869". University Library. University of Melbourne. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
5. Leeder, Stephen (2014-07-07). "The Medical Journal of Australia after 100 years". Medical Journal of Australia. 201 (1): 7. doi:10.5694/mja14.c0707. PMID 24999870.
6. "Backlash over decision by Australia's top medical journal to outsource to company with history of 'unethical' behaviour". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2015-05-01.
7. Rout, Milanda (2009-04-09). "Doctors signed Merck's Vioxx studies". The Australian. Archived from the original on 2009-05-06. Retrieved 2009-05-04.
8. Grant, Bob (2009-04-30). "Merck published fake journal". The Scientist. Retrieved 2009-05-04.
9. Mcinerney, Marie (2015). "Medical Journal of Australia editor sacked over opposition to Elsevier outsourcing". BMJ. 350. British Medical Journal: h2392. doi:10.1136/bmj.h2392. PMID 25943111. S2CID 28269690. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
10. Davey, Melissa. "Backlash over Stephen Leeder sacking puts Medical Journal of Australia in peril". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
11. "Medical journal editor sacked and editorial committee resigns". Sydney Morning Herald. 2015-05-04.
12. "Medical Journal of Australia will be shunned by researchers after editor sacked, academic says". The Guardian. 2015-05-04.
13. Wilcken, Hugo (2017-12-15). "MJA Editor-In-Chief is Australia's most cited academic". Medical Journal of Australia. 208 (208): 1.
14. "Med journal's 'integrity secure'". The Australian. Archived from the original on 2019-01-29. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
15. "John Wiley & Sons to publish Medical Journal of Australia under new partnership" (Press release). Mumbrella. 2018-04-30.
16. "About". Medical Journal of Australia. Australasian Medical Publishing Company. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
17. "Medical Journal of Australia/AboutUs". Medical Journal of Australia. Retrieved April 11, 2014.
18. "MJA InSight". Retrieved April 11, 2014.
19. "MJA InSight/AboutUs". Retrieved April 11, 2014.
20. "Serials cited". CAB Abstracts. CABI. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
21. "CINAHL Complete Database Coverage List". CINAHL. EBSCO Information Services. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
22. "Master Journal List". Intellectual Property & Science. Clarivate Analytics. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
23. "Embase Coverage". Embase. Elsevier. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
24. "Medical Journal of Australia". NLM Catalog. National Center for Biotechnology Information. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
25. "Source details: Medical Journal of Australia". Scopus preview. Elsevier. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
26. "Medical Journal of Australia". 2022 Journal Citation Reports. Web of Science (Science ed.). Clarivate. 2023.

External links

• Official website