BMJ Journals is a global portfolio of peer reviewed scientific and allied health journals publishing widely cited clinical research and health policy analysis.
Through rigorous peer review, robust research integrity standards, and open access publishing options, we support researchers and institutions to inform clinical practice, influence health policy, and improve public health and patient outcomes worldwide.
We publish official journals on behalf of and in partnership with internationally recognised medical societies, including the American Thoracic Society, British Cardiovascular Society, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and British Society of Gastroenterology, strengthening specialist communities and advancing clinical standards across disciplines.
Journal Impact Factors for BMJ Journals, published by BMJ Group
BMJ Group publishes more than 70 peer reviewed medical and health journals spanning clinical medicine, public health and emerging areas of healthcare research.
This page shares the latest Journal Impact Factors for BMJ Journals, based on Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports, alongside wider indicators available on our journal sites, including CiteScore, Altmetric mentions and editorial performance metrics.
Journal Impact Factor is a widely recognised measure of average citations, but it is only one indicator of journal influence. As a DORA signatory, BMJ Group supports responsible research assessment and encourages authors, institutions and librarians to consider a broader view of quality, reach and real-world impact.
In the latest rankings, 33 BMJ Group journals increased their Journal Impact Factor, seven moved up a quartile, 52% of indexed titles ranked in the top quartile of their category, and 81% ranked in the top half. The BMJ reached a Journal Impact Factor of 55.1 and is ranked fifth among general medicine journals worldwide, or fourth when review journals are excluded.
British Journal of Sports Medicine
Number 1 out of 136
in Sports Sciences
15.5 JIF | 22.1 CiteScore
Consistently number 1 for the past 5 years
Journal of Medical Ethics
Number 2 out of 22 in Medical Ethics
4.4 JIF | 6.9 CiteScore
Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery
Number 3 out of 18
in Neuroimaging
4.4 JIF | 9 CiteScore
BMJ Quality & Safety
Number 3 out of 125 in Health Policy & Services
6.8 JIF | 10.8 CiteScore
Family Medicine and Community Health
Number 4 out of 29
in Primary Health Care
4.5 JIF | 6.7 CiteScore
The BMJ
Number 5 out of 336
in Medicine, General & Internal
55.1 JIF | 8.9 CiteScore
GUT
Number 5 out of 153
in Gastroenterology & Hepatology
24.6 JIF | 48.1 CiteScore
BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health
Number 5 out of 66
in Family Studies
3.2 JIF | 5.3 CiteScore
Thorax
Number 7 out of 107
in Respiratory System
9.1 JIF | 14.4 CiteScore
RMD Open
Number 9 out of 58
in Rheumatology
5.3 JIF | 8.1 CiteScore
eGastroenterology
Number 11 out of 153
in Gastroenterology & Hepatology
10.5 JIF | 4.4 CiteScore
BMJ Tobacco Control
Number 12 out of 61
in Substance Abuse
3.3 JIF | 10.6 CiteScore
A top 10 health policy influencer
While scholarly influence is important, its true value lies in its implications for policy and clinical guidelines, and in driving meaningful change in health and social care.
Typically, research takes five to 15 years to impact clinical guidelines. Various factors influence this timeline, from the quality and strength of evidence to peer review, publication, design development processes, consensus, and clinical adoption. BMJ Group’s brand recognition and global reach can accelerate this process by improving clinical practice worldwide.
A top 10 policy influencer
BMJ Group ranked 8th globally in influencing clinical guidelines and policy documents between 2020 and 2024.* We were cited in nearly 6,200 new and updated policy documents and clinical guidelines in 2024. [Source]
A top-tier publisher
The BMJ, (JIF 42.7) ranks 4th in general medicine and 5th worldwide including review journals, consistently in the top five globally [Source]
A strong international presence
As a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association (BMA), we serve an international community with over 450 staff based in offices across the United Kingdom, North America, India and China
An expert network
We work with 3.7 million authors and peer reviewers who help ensure the rigour, accuracy, and credibility of the evidence based research and knowledge we provide
A preferred global partner
More than 10,000 institutions worldwide subscribe to BMJ Group tools and resources
A trusted source
Nearly 80 million users a year rely on BMJ Group websites for trusted research and clinical information
Partnerships with funders and NGOs
We work with funders, multilateral agencies, and non-governmental organisations to align published evidence with policy timelines and implementation needs.
In October 2025, in partnership with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and academic leads at Emory University, we brought commissioned evidence on hand hygiene together in a single open access collection aligned to a live guideline process. Five systematic reviews synthesised the state of the evidence on hand hygiene in community settings, alongside a WHO led commentary outlining policy implications and implementation considerations.
Peer review and production timelines were coordinated with the guideline development schedule, ensuring the evidence was available when required. Publishing the reviews as a unified collection enabled decision makers to access the full evidence base alongside policy analysis during guideline formulation.
The collection examined:
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Barriers to effective hand hygiene, including lack of soap as the most commonly reported constraint
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Seventy five government measures identified through systematic review
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System level requirements for translating evidence into policy
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Alignment with WHO timelines ahead of Global Handwashing Day
Direct influence on global policy The BMJ Global Health supplement formed the formal evidence base for WHO and UNICEF’s first global Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Community Settings.
Reframing hand hygiene as a system responsibility The evidence synthesised in the supplement supported a shift in how hand hygiene is understood by policymakers.
Enabling real world policy uptake WHO is actively using the BMJ Global Health evidence package in government facing policy processes.
It’s a very highly regarded journal, and we felt incredibly lucky. It’s been really positive. If anyone ever asks me within WHO, if I have any suggestions for how to do things, BMJ Global Health will be my first recommendation.”
Joanna Esteves Mills
Global public health consultant and coordinator of the WHO’s guideline development process
Driving global consensus on Alzheimer’s disease imaging
The Alzheimer’s disease imaging roundtable, hosted in Chengdu in partnership with the Department of Radiology at West China Hospital of Sichuan University and the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry (JNNP), is just one example of how we deliver this value in action.
Our approach is helping close the knowledge gap. In early 2025, nearly 95% of all LMIC originated research was published open access, up from 36% in 2021 and 56% in 2022.
Why partner with BMJ Group?
By partnering with royal colleges and leading scholarly and professional medical organisations, we ensure the publication of the latest and most relevant research. This collaboration benefits health professionals everywhere by providing access to cutting-edge medical knowledge and evidence-based practices.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association (BMA), we understand the challenges faced by membership organisations.
Leading medical knowledge worldwide
12th most cited in Clinical Medicine and Science, 11th in Public Health, 9th in Health Services Research *
BMJ Medicine made a strong debut with its first full Impact Factor of 10, ranked 11th in general medicine
Strength across the collection
Over half (52%) of our indexed journals rank in Q1, with more than 20% in the top 10 of their category, including eight titles in the global top five
80% are in the top half of their category, demonstrating consistent performance across the portfolio
Addressing the diverse needs
Published over 95,000 open access articles and made 585,000+ more free to read across multiple platforms
Received more than 2.5 million citations in total across all time, by our Gold and hybrid open access articles
Generated 31 million open access article views from 15 million users across 190+ countries since May 2024
Our mission and values
BMJ Group is a global healthcare knowledge provider with a vision of a healthier world. We share knowledge and expertise to improve patient outcomes.
Our values and vision of a healthier world define our actions and behaviours. We publish, convene and collaborate in a way which is ethical, sustainable, efficient, and equitable.
Ensuring users can trust the integrity of all the content we publish
The content we publish is always of the highest standards, ensuring its reliability to influence care. Our dedicated Content Integrity team focuses on upholding the highest standards of research integrity and publishing ethics. Their role is pivotal in maintaining robust editorial practices. By preventing, detecting, investigating, and advising on integrity breaches, they always prioritise the safety of patients and the public. This relentless commitment to content integrity reassures authors, readers, funders, and institutions of the reliability of our publications.
Our Content Integrity team’s key responsibilities include:
We contribute regularly to guidelines and discussion documents created by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). As co-authors of official COPE guidance, we address issues such as manipulation of the publication process and recently collaborated on developing disclaimers and guidance for dealing with historically offensive content.
By continually advancing our practices and policies, we ensure that institutions can trust us to uphold the highest standards of integrity in research publications.
Advancing scientific discovery through open access
We support the transition of publicly-funded research to open access and are increasing the reach and utility of what we publish, actively reshaping how medical research is conducted and disseminated.
The BMJ ‘s research has always been free to read, and in 2011 we launched our first and largest open access medical journal, BMJ Open.
Today, a third of our journals are fully open access, and we also make academic research freely accessible and discoverable with hybrid publication models.
We offer different types of open access agreements to help your researchers publish their work in leading scientific journals at a reduced cost while complying with open access mandates.
Improving the openness and accessibility of scientific findings
We know that early access to research results accelerates the pace of medical discovery. That’s why we want to reshape the way medical research is conducted and disseminated; by making preprints mainstream. BMJ Group is a part of initiatives like Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) and Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA), making it easier for articles to be found, read and cited.
In 2019, BMJ Group co-launched the preprint server for Health Sciences, medRxiv, with Yale University and Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory. It is the first health sciences preprint server and it allows fast sharing of preliminary research findings to the widest possible audience.
MedRxiv encourages our authors to post their research as preprints. We have also invested in integrating medRxiv with our journals platform to make the submission process easier for authors and to further speed up routes to the publication of peer-reviewed evidence.
BMJ Impact Analytics
Research that improves patients’ lives matters deeply to the funders, institutions and researchers who dedicate their resources to medical and health research. But evaluating the impact of this research on policy and guidelines is traditionally measured by standard scholarly metrics in the absence of more targeted analysis that relates explicitly to health improvement.
BMJ Impact Analytics makes it easy to find, track, and share the real-world impact of research on health and social care. If you fund, publish or produce research or policy, we track where it’s cited in clinical guidance and health policy worldwide.
Identify the impact of your medical research
Developed with universities and research funders, BMJ Impact Analytics is the only analytics tool focused exclusively on health and social care.
Make decisions with confidence
Access a comprehensive, curated database of citation evidence from clinical research, health policy, guidelines, and grey literature, updated daily by BMJ experts.
Connect research to patient care
Track how your research informs local and national guidelines, clinical tools, and frontline decision making.
Target funding to improve outcomes
Assess impact, identify gaps, and direct research investment where it can influence health outcomes most effectively.
See impact in context
Understand the reach and policy relevance of your citations across health systems.
Share your impact story
Generate clear, evidence based insights for funders, institutions, and public reporting.
How the Office of Health Economics uses BMJ Impact Analytics to demonstrate value to funders
BMJ Impact Analytics is a powerful tool designed to track where and how health research is being used in an academic context to improve health outcomes, in policy documents, clinical guidelines, and even at the point of patient care.
The tool filled a critical gap for the Office of Health Economics (OHE) by allowing the organisation to track how its research and policy outputs affect healthcare guidelines worldwide.
“BMJ Impact Analytics has given us valuable insight into how our research is being received and used. It’s helped us stay relevant and responsive without compromising our integrity. That was the missing piece for us.” Charlotte Ashton-Khan, director of external affairs, Office of Health Economics
Using BMJ Impact Analytics, OHE discovered that policymakers and guideline developers had cited 27% of their research outputs—four times the global average of under 6%. For an organisation that conducts commissioned research, this visibility is vital. It helps them demonstrate value to funders and reinforces the credibility and reach of their work.
The tool also helped OHE uncover real world uptake of specific research. One example is an OHE paper, “New Drugs to Tackle Antimicrobial Resistance”, which BMJ Impact Analytics shows was cited by policy documents in three countries, showcasing its role in shaping international approaches to a global health threat.
Even more, BMJ Impact Analytics confirmed that some of the most influential health agencies have cited research by OHE senior economist Grace Hampson on real world evidence for coverage decisions. Notably, the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Canada’s Institut national d’excellence en santé et en services sociaux (INESSS), and the Australian Government Department of Health have included this work in their policy and clinical guidance. This recognition underlines OHE’s global role as a trusted voice in evidence based healthcare funding.
BMJ Impact Analytics has given us valuable insight into how our research
is being received and used. It’s helped us stay relevant and responsive without compromising our integrity. That was the missing piece for us.”Charlotte Ashton-Khan
Director of external affairs, Office of Health Economics
BMJ Impact Analytics
Helping researchers, institutions, and partners to:
🧩 Prove influence: evidence of real world policy citations to help strengthen future funding bids
🌐 Stay relevant: understand how and where research is being used
🚦 Inform strategy: use citation insights to guide future publications and stakeholder engagement
🛡️ Demonstrate accountability: especially vital for organisations producing commissioned research
As funders increasingly demand proof that research leads to real change, BMJ Impact Analytics helps researchers secure future funding by clearly demonstrating the impact of their work on academic knowledge and clinical practice.
“The opportunities that BMJ Group presents through the events they lead are far reaching. They have the potential to change perceptions and mindsets of both healthcare professionals and the regulators of the healthcare systems within which they operate.”
Ian Leistikow
Inspector at Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate and Professor at Erasmus University
Connecting communities
Events
From conferences to masterclasses, webinars to roundtables, our events are high-profile networking opportunities where health professionals can convene to exchange insights, share best practices, unveil cutting-edge research, and collectively address patient safety threats.
Events
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Submit your poster abstract | BMJ Research Forum South Asia 2026
Categories:Real world health research impact We are looking for evidence driven translational research projects that demonstrate measurable impact, innovation, scalability, and real world relevance in healthcare. Strong submissions should clearly show measurable outcomes, are co designed with or informed by patients, carers, or communities, where appropriate, practical applicability, and alignment ...
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Varied voices: How to make research more inclusive and diverse through public involvement (Free & accredited)
Categories:BMJ Group has partnered with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to strengthen how people and communities are involved in medical research. Varied Voices, a free online course developed by NIHR and supported by BMJ Learning, helps healthcare professionals understand how inclusion and diversity improve the quality ...
Bringing together experts in diverse fields
Our privileged networks include close relationships with corporations, foundations, multilateral organisations, non-governmental organisations, and governments.
Our collaboration with these industry experts help us to look beyond healthcare to address issues such as sustainability, poverty reduction, gender and health inequalities, and the changing shape of academic research.
We can then share and compare knowledge through large and small-scale events, webinars and roundtables, while also contributing to the editorial BMJ Collection series.
