One hundred and fifty years of the Journal of Internal Medicine (JIM)

Abstract

From this first issue of 2013, the Journal of Internal Medicine will start celebrating its 150th anniversary. The origin of the Journal dates back to 1863 when Medicinskt Archiv was established by Professor Axel Key and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. The journal was later renamed Nordiskt Medicinskt Archiv, and in 1919 the name was changed again to Acta Medica Scandinavica (from volume 52). In order to appeal to an international audience it was decided once again to change the name in 1989, to the current Journal of Internal Medicine (JIM) (from volume 225). This latter change was accomplished by the Editor-in-Chief at the time, the late Professor Lars-Erik Böttiger, but not without considerable objection from several Swedish professors of internal medicine 1. During the chairmanships of Professors Lars-Erik Böttiger (1989–1995), Göran Holm (1996–2005) and currently Ulf de Faire (2006–), the Journal has developed into a highly reputed international journal promoting clinical science within a broad range of areas of internal medicine. In 2011, the Journal of Internal Medicine (JIM) was ranked no. 12 of 152 journals listed by the Institute of Science Index (ISI) as Medicine – General and Internal, and the impact factor was 5.483. The number of downloads of articles from the Journal has increasingly risen over recent years with more than 400 000 in 2011. The number of submitted manuscripts has also increased to the current level of about 750 per year with an acceptance rate of about 15%. The journal also publishes reviews, usually commissioned, from leading scientists of important topics within clinical medicine. In addition, the Journal supports international symposia from which review articles are published. Collaboration was established about 10 years ago between the Journal and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, of which Professor Key was also a member, to organize the Key Symposia. These highly ranked symposia, named in honour of the founder of the Journal, are arranged on a yearly basis and particularly focus on translational research. The first symposium in this series was arranged in 2003 and entitled Mild Cognitive Impairment. The two most cited articles published in the Journal as of 19 November 2012 (according to ISI) were reviews from this symposium: Petersen 2 with 1179 citations and Winblad et al. 3 with 922 citations. Since then, the Key Symposia have covered many topics: Long QT Syndromes from Molecule to Man (chaired by Lennart Bergfeldt), Membrane Transport Proteins in Health and Disease (chaired by Anita Aperia), Biology of Ageing (chaired by Nils-Göran Larsson), Mucosal Immunity and Novel HIV-vaccine Concepts (chaired by Jan Andersson and Kristina Broliden), Nanomedicine (chaired by Bengt Fadeel), Molecular Basis of Applied Biologicals and Therapeutics (chaired by Ulf Andersson) and Translational and Systems Biology (chaired by Jens B Nielsen). Articles from these symposia have attracted considerable interest among clinical researchers, resulting in many citations and downloads. The 9th Key Symposium was held recently in December 2012: Updating Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis - implications for prevention and treatment (chaired by Miia Kivipelto). The 10th Key Symposium will be in September 2013 with the preliminary title ‘Taming the Cancer Cell’ (to be chaired by Bengt Westermark). Throughout 2013, the 150th anniversary of the Journal will be indicated by a special logo on the cover of all issues, and also on our Wiley homepage (Fig. 1). In a special anniversary issue published in July, a series of articles will describe the historical developments of a number of topics within internal medicine over the last 150 years. The first article published in Medicinskt Archiv in 1863 by Oskar TH Sandahl 4, which dealt with the physiological and therapeutical effects of compressed air, will be highlighted by a special review of the development of oxygen and hyperbaric oxygen treatment during the past 150 years. Other review articles will show how the Journal has covered scientific breakthroughs over the years within important areas of research such as cardiology. It should also be noted that all published articles in the Journal since 1863 have been digitized and are now available on the Journal website (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2796/issues). No conflict of interest was declared.