Readership of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (JABFM) online journal continued to grow in 2006. Figure 1 illustrates the number of total access events (sometimes called hits) plus the full-text HTML and PDF accesses over 12 months. New issues are published 6 times per year, and these months are marked on the figure as well. Reader use of the JABFM online journal grew rapidly in the second half of the year, peaking at more than 117,000 access events with the publication of the final issue in November 2006.
Data source: “Year-to-Date Usage Summary” for the JABFM, HighWire Press; produced January 6, 2007 (accessed January 9, 2007).
E-Mail Alerts
Readers can sign up to receive e-mailed announcements of the contents of new issues the day they are posted online by clicking on “E-mail Alerts” in the left navigation bar at http://www.jabfm.org. E-mail alerts announcing future tables of contents and a variety of other types of alerts are also available.
Top 20 JABFM Online Articles in 2006
Table 1 presents the 20 most frequently accessed JABFM articles in 2006. JABFM content is open access and available back to 2003 in full-text HTML and PDF formats and in PDF format for 2001 and 2002 (http://www.jabfm.org). The article “Abnormal Uterine Bleeding: A Management Algorithm” by John Ely et al was the most read during 2006, which is remarkable given that the article was published in the final issue of the year. John Ely also had a second article in the top 20 (“Approach to Leg Edema of Unclear Etiology”).
The 20 Most-Frequently Read Articles* in the JABFM during January 2006 through December 2006†
Also noteworthy is the continued strong interest in 2 articles published in 2003, one by John Astin et al (“Mind-Body Medicine: State of the Science, Implications for Practice”) and the other by Dwenda Gjerdingen (“The Effectiveness of Various Postpartum Depression Treatments and the Impact of Antidepressant Drugs on Nursing Infants”).
Six of the 2006 top 20 were published in 2004. Tamara Dominguez’s article, “It’s Not a Spider Bite, It’s Community-Acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus,” was one of the first to call attention to the fact that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is being misdiagnosed as spider bites. The Center for Disease Control is now alerting health care providers to this: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/ar_mrsa_ca_clinicians.html (dated February 3, 2005).
Alan Douglass also authored 2 publications in the 2006 top 20 accessed articles (“Evaluation and Treatment of Low Back Pain in Family Practice” and “Evaluation and Treatment of Posterior Neck Pain in Family Practice”). These 2 articles were published in the JABFP 2004 pain supplement.
As shown in Table 1, the list of JABFM papers most read in 2006 also illustrates our readership’s strong interest in evidence-based clinical medicine and what is sometimes called complementary and alternative medicine, in this case fish oil, yoga, and mind-body medicine.
Notes
Conflict of interest: The authors are editors and staff of the JABFM.
