OpenJournalRank

Journal rankings · indicator year 2020

Choose a field to open its ranking, or a journal to find its row in its subfield’s list.

Subfield ranking · 2020

Surgery journal rankings 2020

962 ranked journals · Subfield in Medicine

Surgery has 962 ranked journals in 2020. The median journal has an OJR of 0.49, below the world average of 1.00, up 0.01 on 2019; Q1 starts at OJR 0.97. The top three are Nature Reviews Disease Primers, Gut, and Obesity Facts.

Ranks and citation indicators: 2020. Journal access status and listed APC: source snapshot September 23, 2026.

Ranked journals

Journals whose main subfield sits in this category and that published at least 30 citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) in 2017–2019, the window the 2020 score is computed on.

962
21% of Medicine
Median OJR

The OpenJournalRank Indicator (OJR) is a free, publicly available metric of a journal’s field-normalized citation impact, computed from open OpenAlex citation data. It compares citations to a journal’s papers from the previous three years with the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so 1.00 is the world average and values can be compared across fields. It is computed with the NCI3 method.

The middle OJR among ranked journals in this category: half score higher, half lower. 1.00 is the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type.

The dot is this category, the solid tick is the median of all ranked journals and the dashed line is the world average.

0.49+0.01 vs 2019
This subfieldAll 0.82World 1.00
Open-access journals

Share of ranked journals in this category that are fully open access, so every paper is free to read. Hybrid journals, which sell subscriptions and open single papers for a fee, are not counted.

51%
All fields: 35%
Median listed APC

Median list price of the article processing charge, in US dollars, among ranked journals in this category that list a price above zero. Journals with a listed APC of $0 and journals with no known price are left out of this median. The At a glance table below gives a second median that includes the $0 prices.

$3,000
Median positive listed APC: $3,000 among 427 journals. Another 8 list $0; 527 have no known price. All fields: $3,300.

Subfields of Medicine (42)

Show all 42 subfields

962 ranked journals

Filters

Quartile

Quartiles split the ranked journals of the list you are viewing into four equal groups by OJR. Q1 is the top quarter and Q4 the bottom quarter.

They are computed within the list on screen, so a journal can be Q1 in its subfield and Q2 in the global ranking.

Access
APC (list price)
Loading every ranked journal in this list…
Surgery ranking, 2020

Rank is the position by OJR within the list on screen; 1 is the highest.

OJR is field-normalized 3-year citation impact: 1.00 is the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so values compare across fields.

The badge is the journal’s quartile in this list.

OJR

Citations per paper over a two-year window, counted from OpenAlex. It is not field-normalized, so compare it only between journals of the same field.

▲ or ▼ is the change from 2019. This is OpenJournalRank’s own count, not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor.

Citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) published in 2017–2019, the window the 2020 OJR is computed on. A journal needs at least 30 to be ranked.

Share of the journal’s 2017–2019 papers that are free to read in any open-access form. The green OA tag next to a title marks a fully open-access journal.

List price of the article processing charge in US dollars. “$0 listed” means the listed price is zero; a dash means no price is listed.

The line is the journal’s OJR from 2011 to 2020.

Compare
1Nature Reviews Disease PrimersNature Portfolio · United Kingdom
7.57Q152.64 8.19 up from 201914534%—
2GutBMJ · United Kingdom
4.71Q114.55 1.79 up from 201984060%—
3Obesity FactsOAKarger Publishers · Switzerland
3.88Q15.27 6.14 down from 2019165100%$3,590
4GastroenterologyElsevier BV · United States
3.54Q110.73 2.26 up from 20191,85814%$4,180
5World Journal of Emergency SurgeryOABioMed Central · United Kingdom
3.34Q17.54 0.81 up from 2019163100%$3,990
6RadiographicsRadiological Society of North America · United States
3.14Q16.14 0.05 down from 20194308%—
7EFORT Open ReviewsOABritish Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgery · United Kingdom
2.96Q17.00 2.85 up from 2019210100%$1,800
8Annals of SurgeryLippincott Williams & Wilkins · United States
2.92Q17.01 0.11 up from 20191,50531%—
9Journal of Bone and Joint SurgeryWolters Kluwer · United States
2.89Q15.15 0.07 down from 20191,21929%—
10Current Reviews in Musculoskeletal MedicineSpringer Science+Business Media · United States
2.88Q15.67 0.54 up from 2019214100%$4,590
11JAMA SurgeryAmerican Medical Association · United States
2.77Q15.03 0.92 down from 20191,11242%—
12The Bone & Joint JournalBritish Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgery · United Kingdom
2.77Q16.17 0.97 up from 201982217%—
13The American Journal of Sports MedicineSAGE Publishing · United States
2.67Q16.59 0.14 down from 20191,15514%$4,400
14The Journal of Heart and Lung TransplantationElsevier BV · United States
2.66Q17.70 1.43 up from 20195897%$3,606
15Current Atherosclerosis ReportsSpringer Science+Business Media · United States
2.65Q15.90 0.02 up from 201917439%$5,190
16The American Journal of Surgical PathologyLippincott Williams & Wilkins · United States
2.55Q16.33 0.01 up from 201962525%—
17Gastroenterology Clinics of North AmericaElsevier BV · United States
2.44Q13.58 1.58 down from 201918612%$3,560
18DiabetesAmerican Diabetes Association · United States
2.44Q16.53 0.13 down from 20197949%—
19HelicobacterWiley · United Kingdom
2.41Q16.06 1.43 up from 201924916%$4,150
20The Journal of ArthroplastyElsevier BV · United States
2.35Q15.72 1.05 up from 20191,94422%$4,650
21Scoliosis and Spinal DisordersBioMed Central · United Kingdom
2.28Q16.08 3.27 up from 201962——
22Pain and TherapyOAAdis, Springer Healthcare · United Kingdom
2.23Q16.33 0.63 down from 201973100%$7,400
23Acta OrthopaedicaOATaylor & Francis · Sweden
2.19Q14.13 0.25 up from 2019338100%$1,779
24Journal of Personalized MedicineOAMultidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute · Switzerland
2.13Q15.55 0.50 down from 2019113100%$3,137
25Current Gastroenterology ReportsSpringer Science+Business Media · United States
2.13Q14.52 0.66 down from 201919315%$3,790
2.07Q14.13 3.95 down from 201958419%—
27Journal of the American College of SurgeonsLippincott Williams & Wilkins · United States
2.06Q14.79 0.33 up from 20196809%$3,600
28British Medical BulletinOxford University Press · United Kingdom
2.04Q15.90 1.98 up from 201911848%$4,362
29British Journal of AnaesthesiaElsevier BV · United Kingdom
2.02Q15.66 0.27 down from 20191,210100%$4,450
2.00Q16.71 4.70 up from 2019114100%—
31Seminars in Pediatric SurgeryElsevier BV · United States
1.96Q13.19 1.04 down from 201917317%$3,420
32American Journal of TransplantationElsevier BV · United Kingdom
1.95Q15.03 0.28 down from 20191,19596%$4,300
33British journal of surgeryOxford University Press · United Kingdom
1.92Q16.54 0.51 up from 201973463%$5,007
34The American Journal of GastroenterologyLippincott Williams & Wilkins · United States
1.91Q15.04 0.07 down from 20191,1394%$4,390
1.90Q13.52 1.55 down from 201914723%$3,620
36Orthopedic Clinics of North AmericaElsevier BV · United States
1.89Q13.36 0.43 up from 20191563%$3,950
37Bone and Joint ResearchOAJournal of Bone and Joint Surgery · United Kingdom
1.89Q15.98 1.72 up from 2019239100%$1,594
38Journal of Clinical MedicineOAMultidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute · Switzerland
1.87Q15.17 0.63 up from 20193,000100%$3,137
39AnesthesiologyLippincott Williams & Wilkins · United States
1.85Q14.52 0.01 up from 20191,03859%—
40Clinics in Sports MedicineElsevier BV · United States
1.84Q12.94 0.20 up from 201913333%$3,000
1.84Q14.06 0.28 up from 201962673%—
42World Journal of GastroenterologyBaishideng Publishing Group · United States
1.82Q16.73 2.14 up from 20191,94397%—
43Frontiers in PediatricsOAFrontiers Media · Switzerland
1.80Q14.38 0.62 up from 20191,193100%$3,801
44Journal of Orthopaedics and TraumatologyOASpringer Nature · Italy
1.80Q13.81 0.34 down from 201978100%$3,190
45Advances in Preventive MedicineHindawi Publishing Corporation · United Kingdom
1.79Q12.88 2.62 down from 201930100%$800
46AtherosclerosisElsevier BV · Netherlands
1.78Q15.59 1.85 up from 20191,18313%$4,020
47NeurospineOAKorean Spinal Neurosurgery Society · South Korea
1.75Q13.90 1.24 up from 2019161100%—
48JBJS Open AccessOAWolters Kluwer · United States
1.74Q13.73 0.26 up from 2019102100%$2,250
49Journal of Shoulder and Elbow SurgeryElsevier BV · United States
1.73Q14.35 0.67 up from 20191,14417%$3,850
50Surgery for Obesity and Related DiseasesElsevier BV · United States
1.73Q14.18 0.23 up from 201979922%$3,800

Citations made in 2020. Corpus-wide, 86.1% of core-journal articles and reviews published that year have at least one matched reference; the share varies by journal and field.

240 additional Surgery journals with metrics are unranked under this release’s eligibility rules: a journal needs at least 30 citable documents in 2017–2019, at least 80% of them with a subfield, and a positive world-average expectation. Ranks are within the whole category; filters hide rows without re-ranking. OJR excludes self-citations.

Rising journals

At a glance

Indicator year: 2020. Publication window: 2017–2019. How these summaries are calculated

Ranked journals
962
Window papers (baseline)
288,629 +13.4% from indicator year 2017
Median OJR
0.493 +1.3% from indicator year 2017
Rising journals (2025)
87

Window papers are the baseline paper population: citable papers (articles, reviews and conference papers) from 2017–2019 in all journals of the world-average baseline, including non-core journals, counted by each paper’s own subfield. They are not the papers of the ranked journals alone.

Category by indicator year
MeasureYear series20002001200220032004200520062007200820092010201120122013201420152016201720182019202020212022202320242025
Ranked journals3163363583783914094284444745005315706106757347738218529019369629851,001993980945
Window papers (baseline)91,365104,064110,345118,403120,545132,135144,236159,671171,317188,308202,162216,202221,967228,874238,791247,306252,044254,527263,607275,745288,629304,057320,840331,064332,656336,566
Median OJR0.3500.330.3360.3420.34840.34820.370.4520.4430.430.43900.45380.4630.4610.4700.500.4710.4860.4830.4840.4930.4580.43860.4460.45420.448

How to read these rankings

OJR, the OpenJournalRank Indicator
A field-normalized 3-year citation impact, computed from OpenAlex with the NCI3 method. It divides the citations a journal’s papers received by the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so 1.00 is the world average and 2.00 means twice as many citations as expected. Because it is normalized, it can be compared across fields. Read the methodology
Quartiles
Q1 to Q4 split the ranked journals of the list you are viewing into four equal groups by OJR. A journal’s quartile depends on the list: the same journal can be Q1 in its subfield and Q2 among all journals.
Impact factor (2-year)
Citations per paper over a two-year window, counted from OpenAlex. It is easy to compare with familiar impact factors but is not field-normalized, so compare it only within a field. It is not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. Why it differs from the Journal Impact Factor
Rank ranges
Each rank in the latest year carries a likely range from 1,000 resamples of the journal’s papers. Where two journals’ ranges overlap, the data cannot tell them apart, so treat neighbouring ranks as ties.