The Institute for Scientific Information, author of the highly regarded Science Citation Index (now part of the Web of Science), recently completed (Fall 2003) another analysis of the scientific journal literature. By examining the references cited in papers, it ranked journals by impact factor, i.e., the number of times that an "average" paper in a journal was cited in 2002. The following is a ranked list of the results for biomedicine for journals with an impact factor of at least 10. It does not include most of the review journals like the Annual Review of (X), Advances in (X), etc. whose papers by their nature as state-of-the-art reviews are among the most cited papers in the literature (Annual Review of Immunology's impact factor for 2002 is a whopping 54.455) The list goes from the most frequently cited journals to the least. The number to the right of the journal name is the number of times that an "average" paper in that journal was cited in 2002. One is struck by the fact that of the top 12 journals, 8 of them are Nature and its offspring.

P.S. If you are interested in the impact factor of a journal not listed below, go to Journal Citation Reports and select the "Search for a specific journal" button on the right.

CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians : 32.886

New England Journal of Medicine : 31.736

Nature : 30.432

Science : 28.956

Nature Medicine : 28.740

Nature Immunology : 27.868

Cell : 27.254

Nature Genetics : 26.711

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology : 26.170

Nature Reviews Neuroscience : 24.047

Nature Review Genetics : 21.762

Nature Cell Biology : 20.699

Trends in Cell Biology : 19.880

Current Opinion in Cell Biology : 19.022

Genes & Development : 18.772

Immunity : 17.468

JAMA : the Journal of the American Medical Association : 16.783

Molecular Cell : 16.471

Journal of Experimental Medicine : 15.837

Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews : 15.690

Trends in Immunology :15.507

Lancet : 15.397

Nature Neuroscience : 14.857

JNCI : Journal of the National Cancer Institute : 14.500

Trends in Neurosciences : 14.474

Trends in Biochemical Sciences : 14.398

Nature Reviews Immunology : 14.059

Journal of Clinical Investigation : 14.051

Neuron : 13.846

Nature Reviews Cancer : 13.625

Gastroenterology : 13.440

Trends in Pharmacological Sciences : 13.276

Trends in Genetics : 13.216

Current Opinion in Immunology : 12.918

Immunology Today : 12.856

Nature Biotechnology : 12.822

JCB : 12.522

Trends in Plant Science : 12.414

Current Opinion in Genetics & Development : 12.111

Trends in Ecology & Evolution : 11.929

Archives of General Psychiatry : 11.622

Developmental Cell : 11.531

Annals of Internal Medicine : 11.414

Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology : 11.136

Plant Cell : 10.751

Current Opinion in Neurobiology : 10.718

PNAS : 10.700

EMBO Journal : 10.698

American Journal of Human Genetics : 10.649

Circulation : 10.255

Nature Structural Biology : 10.244

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