JAMA

Lore & Background

Founded in 1883 by the American Medical Association, JAMA replaced the organization’s earlier Transactions. In the late 1800s, medical journals were much like general journalism, and having work published in JAMA was seen as a perk of AMA membership.

Before the 1920s, editors focused mainly on filling each issue, but from the 1910s through the mid-1920s, the journal entered what became known as the “turndown era,” as submissions grew numerous enough to allow rejections based on quality. Routine peer review was not formally adopted until after World War II. The journal took its current name, JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, in 1960, and is commonly called JAMA.

Reader's Guide

According to Journal Citation Reports, the journal's 2025 impact factor is 65.4, ranking it 4th out of 336 journals in the category 'Medicine, General & Internal'. JAMA Network reports that the journal accepts 10% of more than 11,500 annual submissions and 4% of more than 5,400 research manuscripts. 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. 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', which was the first academic paper ever published by a sitting U.S. president.

Publication of article by Barack Obama

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. After the controversial 1999 firing of an editor-in-chief, George D. Lundberg, a process was put in place to ensure editorial freedom.

Policy shift

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. From 1964 to 2013, JAMA used images of artwork on its cover and it published essays commenting on the artwork.

Artwork

According to former editor George Lundberg, this practice was designed to link the humanities and medicine. 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. The purpose of the redesign was to standardize the appearance of all journals in the JAMA Network. The arts feature was discontinued in 2024.