The BMJ
peer-reviewed medical journal
The BMJ is a biweekly peer-reviewed medical journal, published by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, which in turn is wholly owned by the British Medical Association (BMA). The BMJ has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Previously called the British Medical Journal, the title was officially shortened to BMJ in 1988, and then changed to The BMJ in 2014. The current editor-in-chief of The BMJ is Kamran Abbasi, who was appointed in January 2022.
History
The journal began publishing on 3 October 1840 as the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal and quickly attracted the attention of physicians around the world through its publication of high-quality original research articles and unique case reports. The BMJ's first editors were P. Hennis Green, lecturer on the diseases of children at the Hunterian School of Medicine, who also was its founder, and Robert Streeten of Worcester, a member of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association council.
The first issue of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal (PMSJ) was 16 pages long and contained three simple woodcut illustrations. The longest items were the editors' introductory editorial and a report of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association's Eastern Branch. Other pages included a condensed version of Henry Warburton's medical reform bill, book reviews, clinical papers, and case notes. There were 2+1⁄2 columns of advertisements.
“The BMJ” enters the record as peer-reviewed medical journal. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what peer-reviewed, medical and journal can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“The BMJ” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, peer-reviewed, medical and journal provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q546003. VIAF identifies the subject as 263872909. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1988, 2014, 2022 and 1840.
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This entry incorporates text from “The BMJ” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.