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| The Lancet | |
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| Abbreviated title | Lancet |
| Discipline | peer-reviewed medical journal |
| Language | English |
| Publication details | |
| Publisher | Joseph Onwhyn (Britain) |
| Publication history | founded 1823 |
| Indexing | |
| ISSN | 0140-6736 |
| Links | |
The Lancet is a peer-reviewed general medical journal, published weekly by Elsevier, part of Reed Elsevier.
One of the world's best-known and most respected general medical journals[citation needed], with editorial offices in London and New York, The Lancet was founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley, who named it after the surgical instrument called a lancet, as well as an arched window ("to let in light"). As of 2008[update], the editor-in-chief is Richard Horton.
The Lancet takes a stand on several important medical issues. Recent examples include criticism of the World Health Organization, rejecting the efficacy of homeopathy as a therapeutic option, disapproval during the time Reed Exhibitions hosted arms industry fairs, and a call in 2003 for tobacco to be made illegal.[1]
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The Lancet has a significant readership throughout the world with a high impact factor, especially via its website TheLancet.com, which has attracted over 1.8 million registered users since its launch in 1996. It publishes original research articles, review articles ("seminars" and "reviews"), editorials, book reviews, correspondences, amidst other regulars such as news features and case reports. The Lancet is considered to be one of the "core" general medical journals, the others being the New England Journal of Medicine, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the British Medical Journal. The Lancet's impact factor is currently ranked #2 among general medical journals, second only to the NEJM Institute for Scientific Information Journal Citation Reports.[citation needed]
The Lancet has now given birth to three speciality journals, all bearing the parent title — The Lancet Neurology (neurology), and The Lancet Oncology (oncology), both of which publish original research and reviews and The Lancet Infectious Diseases (infectious diseases), which publishes reviews. All of them have established significant reputations as important journals in their medical specialty.
Prior to 1990, Lancet had volume numbering that reset every year. Issues in January to June were in volume i, with the rest in volume ii. In 1990, Lancet moved to a sequential volume numbering scheme, with two volumes per year. Volumes were retro-actively assigned to the years prior to 1990, with the first issue of 1990 being assigned volume 335, and the last issue of 1989 assigned volume 334. The table of contents listing on Science Direct uses this new numbering scheme.[2]
The Lancet was severely criticized after it published a paper in 1998, in which the authors suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. In February 2004 The Lancet published a partial retraction of the paper (Lancet 2004;363:750).[3] The editor-in-chief, Richard Horton, went on the record to say the paper had "fatal conflicts of interest" because one of the authors, Andrew Wakefield, had a serious conflict of interest that he had not declared to The Lancet.[4]
The Lancet published a controversial estimate of the Iraq war's Iraqi death toll—around one hundred thousand—in 2004. In 2006 a followup study by the same team suggested that the violent death rate in Iraq was not only consistent with the earlier estimate, but had increased considerably in the intervening period (Lancet surveys of casualties of the Iraq War). The second survey estimated that there had been 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war. The 95% confidence interval was 392,979 to 942,636. 1849 households that contained 12,801 people were surveyed.[5]
In January 2006, it was revealed that data had been fabricated in an article[6] by the Norwegian cancer researcher Jon Sudbø and 13 co-authors published in The Lancet in October 2005.[7][8] Several articles in other scientific journals were withdrawn following the withdrawal in The Lancet. Within a week, the high-impact New England Journal of Medicine published an expression of editorial concern regarding its published research papers by the same author and in November 2006, the journal withdrew two oral cancer studies led by the Norwegian researcher.[9]