I was listening to a podcast recently, and it was talking about rankings, all things, academic rankings.

And I thought to myself, that's a good topic for plenary session. Let's bring it to the biomedical

context, and let's talk about the different types of rankings. Influence how you can

evaluate a scholar, how you can evaluate an institution, do the rankings help. I'll give you

some of my views on the topic. It's a little bit different than when I listen to because I think I put

a lot less stock in it than the presentation I was hearing. So let's talk about the rankings. Maybe

first we'll talk about the journal rankings impact factor. There's some new impact factors out.

And I think the New England

Journal has been dethroned it's been dethroned by Lancet which is now in the general and

specialty medical journals the number one impact factor journal does that mean it's the best

well you know I always have attention in my mind when I think about these journals

because whether we like it or not, the impact factor

for these journals does correlate loosely with some things. Practice changing, randomized control

trials are often published in the New England Journal of Medicine. If they're not published

there, they tend to go to the Lancet or JAMA. And if they're not published there, they tend to go to

the BMJ or the Annals of Internal Medicine. That's the pinnacle of general internal medicine randomized

control trials. What about oncology? I think oncology is a little bit different. They either go to

the New England Journal of Medicine. If not, they go to the JCO or Lancet oncology, if not they go to JAMA oncology or even the Lancet, I think, a little bit more rarer.

Do they go to JAMA ahead of some of these other journals?

I think a little bit less in oncology.

I think the New England, Lancet oncology, JCO, they're much more likely to get the top oncology articles.

Actually, that's something for JAMA to work on. They could actually do a better job of trying

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