Transactions of the American Medical Association; Councilor's Bulletin; Bulletin of the American Medical Association; Journal of the American Medical Association
According to Journal Citation Reports, the journal's 2022 impact factor is 120.7, ranking it 3rd out of 168 journals in the category "Medicine, General & Internal".[3]
The journal was established in 1883 by the American Medical Association and superseded the Transactions of the American Medical Association.[4]Councilor's Bulletin was renamed the Bulletin of the American Medical Association, which later was absorbed by the Journal of the American Medical Association.[5] In 1960, the journal obtained its current title, JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association.[6][7] The journal is commonly referred to as JAMA.
Continuing Education Opportunities for Physicians was a semiannual journal section providing lists for regional or national levels of continuing medical education (CME). Between 1937 and 1955, the list was produced either quarterly or semiannually. Between 1955 and 1981, the list was available annually, as the number of CME offerings increased from 1,000 (1955) to 8,500 (1981). In 2016, CME transitioned into a digital offering from the JAMA Network called JN Learning CME & MOC from JAMA Network.[8] JN Learning provides CME and MOC credit from article and audio materials published within all 12 JAMA Network journals, including JAMA.
On 11 July 2016, JAMA published an article by Barack Obama entitled "United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps",[9] which was the first academic paper ever published by a sitting U.S. president.[10] The article was not subject to blind peer-review. It argued for specific policies that future presidents could pursue in order to improve national health care reform implementation.[11]
After the controversial 1999 firing of an editor-in-chief, George D. Lundberg, a process was put in place to ensure editorial freedom. A seven-member journal oversight committee was created to evaluate the editor-in-chief and to help ensure editorial independence. Since its inception, the committee has met at least once a year. Presently, JAMA policy states that article content should be attributed to authors, not to the publisher.[12][13][14][15]
From 1964 to 2013, JAMA used images of artwork on its cover and it published essays commenting on the artwork.[16] According to former editor George Lundberg, this practice was designed to link the humanities and medicine.[17] In 2013, a format redesign moved the art feature to an inside page, replacing an image of the artwork on the cover with a table of contents.[16] The purpose of the redesign was to standardize the appearance of all journals in the JAMA Network.[18]
On a February 2021 JAMA podcast a Deputy Editor of the journal proposed that "structural racism is an unfortunate term to describe a very real problem" and that "taking racism out of the conversation would help" to ensure "all people who lived in disadvantaged circumstances have equal opportunities to become successful and have better qualities of life."[19][20] In addition to the comments made during the podcast, JAMA then tweeted out the podcast with the caption "No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care" which further added to the controversy.[21][22] The comments were immediately criticized by some,[23] resulting in deletion of the podcast[24][25] and resignation of the Deputy Editor. On June 1, 2021, the editor-in-chief announced that he would resign effective June 30, 2021 to "create an opportunity for new leadership at JAMA."[26][24] Columnists Eric Zorn and Daniel Henninger asserted in separate Op-Eds that the resignation of the two editors was an unfortunate substitute for meaningful conversations about racism and health care.[27][28]
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