The journals listed here have been reliable sources for high-quality, peer-reviewed medical information and recommended by some of the SOM faculty. Keeping updated with these resources and collecting evidence-based information will support your work in PBL, Weekly Cases, Journal Clubs, capstone research and continue to aid your decision making in clinics or at the bedside as an M3/M4.
Journal quality metric is one measure of the journal's reputation. Two of the most well-known and widely used journal quality metrics are the impact factors and the h-index. They are tools that are used to quantify a journal’s impact.
Journal Impact Factors: JCR Impact Factor and SJR
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) produces JCR journal impact factor which is available on Web Of Science. The Impact Factor is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. SCIMAGO Journal and Country Rank (SJR) is a free alternative to JCR. SJR indicator or SJR is alternative to the JCR journal impact factor. SJR accounts for both the number of citations received by a journal and the importance/prestige of where the journal citations come from.
SJR divides journals in the same subject area into four quartiles: Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. Q1 is the top 25% of journals in the list; Q2 is journals in the 25 to 50% group; Q3 is journals in the 50 to 75% group and Q4 is journals in the 75 to 100% group. The most prestigious journals within a subject area are those in Q1.
Note: Neither JCR journal Impact Factor nor SJR measures the quality of an article but rather the quality of the journal in which the article is published.
H indicates that a researcher or a journal has published H articles that have been cited H or more times.
According to Charlesworth Author Services, "The impact factor is primarily useful as a measure of what other researchers think about the quality of that journal; that is, the journal’s reputation in the field. In contrast, the h-index is likely to give you a more realistic perspective on the relative ‘success’ of your paper if you publish in that journal, meaning how many times it may be cited by other works in the future."
This guide provides some top journals in each specialty based on SJR ranking and recent articles from these journals.
National Library of Medicine recently redeveloped their outdated Core Clinical Journals (CCJ) list into a new Clinically Useful Journals (CUJ) list (Klein-Fedyshin & Ketchum, 2023). The CCJ list has been used by clinicians and librarians for half a century for two main purposes: narrowing a literature search to clinically useful journals and identifying high priority titles for library collections.
If you want to limit your PubMed Search within the CUJ list, follow the instructions below.
1. Copy and paste the long search strategy (2 pages) in Appendix H. in PubMed and click "Search".
2. On the PubMed search result page, click "Advanced".
3. Type your search terms, ADD to the Query box, click the arrow next to "Search" (see the image below), then click "Add to History".
4. Go to "History and Search Details" section (on the bottom of the page), click the three dots under "Actions" of the search you just did, then select "Add Query".
5. Click the three dots under "Actions" of the CUJ journal search on Step 1, select "Add with AND".
6. Click the blue "Search" button to see the articles that are published in the CUJ list.
References
