The New England Journal of Medicine

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is an English-language peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It describes itself as the oldest continuously published medical journal in the world.

History
The NEJM was founded by John Collins Warren in 1812 as a quarterly called The New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery. For one year, 1827, it was named the New England Medical Review and Journal. In 1828, it became a weekly, and was renamed The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal; one hundred years later, it took on its present name.

It publishes editorials, papers on original research, review articles, correspondence, and case reports, and has a special section called "Images in Clinical Medicine".

Influence
The website for the George Polk Awards noted that its 1977 award to the New England Journal of Medicine "provided the first significant mainstream visibility for a publication that would achieve enormous attention and prestige in the ensuing decades."

The journal usually has the highest impact factor of the journals of clinical medicine (including the Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Lancet); in 2006, the impact factor was 51, according to the Journal Citation Reports, the first research journal to break 50.

Vioxx correction controversy
In the early 2000s, the New England Journal of Medicine was involved in a controversy around problems with research on the drug Vioxx. A study was published in the journal in November 2000 which noted an increase in myocardial infarction amongst those taking Vioxx. According to Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journal, concerns about the correctness of that study were raised with the journal's editor, Jeff Drazen, as early as August 2001. That year, both the US Food and Drug Administration and the Journal of the American Medical Association also cast doubt on the validity of the data interpretation that had been published in the NEJM. Merck withdrew the drug from market in September 2004. In December 2005, NEJM published an expression of concern about the original study following discovery that the authors knew more about certain adverse events than they disclosed at the time of publication. From the Expression of Concern: "Until the end of November 2005, we believed that these were late events that were not known to the authors in time to be included in the article published in the Journal on November 23, 2000. It now appears, however, from a memorandum dated July 5, 2000, that was obtained by subpoena in the Vioxx litigation and made available to the Journal, that at least two of the authors knew about the three additional myocardial infarctions at least two weeks before the authors submitted the first of two revisions and 4 1/2 months before publication of the article." During the five-year period between publication and Expression of Concern, it has been estimated that Merck paid NEJM as much as US$836,000 for article reprints that Merck used for promotional purposes. The journal was publicly rebuked for its response to the research issues in editorials appearing in publications including the British Medical Journal and the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Open access policy
NEJM provides delayed free online access to its research articles (it does so six months after publication, and maintains that access dating back to 1993). This delay does not apply to readers from the least developed countries, for whom the content is available at no charge for personal use.

NEJM also has two podcast features, one with interviews of doctors and researchers that are publishing in the journal, and another summarizing the content of each issue. Other offerings include Continuing Medical Education, Videos in Clinical Medicine (showing videos of medical procedures), and the weekly Image Challenge.

Editors

 * Walter Prentice Bowers, 1921–1937
 * Robert Nason Nye, 1937–1947
 * Joseph Garland, 1947–1967
 * Franz J. Ingelfinger, 1967–1977
 * Arnold S. Relman, 1977–1991
 * Jerome P. Kassirer, 1991–1999
 * Marcia Angell, 1999–2000
 * Jeffrey M. Drazen, 2000–present