An analysis of the hypertension journals.

There are now at least nine medical journals which are exclusively related to the topic of hypertension, of which two started publication in 1992. We have conducted an analysis of the impact of these journals in the published body of medical research into hypertension as well as the reports published in 1993 by the hypertension management 'guidelines' committees in the UK, USA, New Zealand, Canada and the WHO. Finally an analysis was conducted of the contents of the four established hypertension journals (Hypertension, Journal of Hypertension, Journal of Human Hypertension and American Journal of Hypertension) in 1992 in relation to the country of origin of the papers and the topics covered. Only 19% of all the hypertension papers listed in Index Medicus in 1992 were from the four established journals and only 12.6% of papers quoted in the 'guidelines' reports were from these journals. Most papers, and particularly the important ones, tend to be published in the weekly or monthly general medical journals. In the contents of the four journals, Hypertension and Journal of Hypertension tended to take more papers devoted to basic science than the Journal of Human Hypertension and American Journal of Hypertension which favoured more clinically relevant papers. American papers tended to go to American journals while European and Japanese papers appeared in all journals, although the Japanese bias towards basic science meant that their contributions also appeared in the two basic science orientated journals.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)