Editorials

The BMJ through American eyes

BMJ USA is now available online

An editorial in the 17 February 2001 issue spoke of the "two US sisters" of the BMJ, the Western Journal of Medicine and the newly released BMJ USA.¹ We bring bad and good news about the sisters. The bad news is that the Western Journal of Medicine, a popular publication among doctors in the western United States, has succumbed to the economic pressures faced by today's medical journals. The BMJ Publishing Group and the University of California regret that they were unable to keep this impressive journal in circulation. The good news is that BMJ USA remains vibrant and growing and now has online access.

BMJ USA is a monthly journal that is circulated to some 100 000 primary care doctors in the United States. Its editors assemble articles from the weekly BMJ that are relevant to primary care practice in the United States and reprint them in issues that appear about two months after their first release in the BMJ. This gives American primary care doctors an easy means to enjoy the features of the BMJ that are of greatest relevance to them.

BMJ USA offers readers something more than they would get from the BMJ alone. Every issue contains a commissioned editorial by an American author and a growing number of editorials, research papers, commentaries, and fillers submitted by American contributors for publication in BMJ USA. Articles that first appeared in the BMJ are edited to reflect American spellings and medical terminology. Resources listed in BMJ articles that refer readers to organisations, publications, and websites in the United Kingdom or Europe are often replaced with corresponding resources that are more accessible and recognisable to US readers. Rapid responses that were posted on bmj.com to comment on BMJ articles are often printed in BMJ USA alongside the original articles, giving readers immediate access to counterarguments, often before letters to the editor are published in the weekly paper issue of the BMJ. "Journal Rack"a special feature in BMJ USAsummarises the findings of recently published studies from major journals and practice guidelines of interest to American doctors.

With this issue we announce an important new feature of BMJ USA: online access. Readers familiar with the bmj.com home page will notice a link to BMJ USA that brings the full text of this journal to readers in America and elsewhere. We think internet access will make BMJ USA more accessible to primary care doctors in the United States, and perhaps general practitioners in other countries will find the site useful. Articles that appeared originally in the BMJ, which are already available on bmj.com, will look the same in the online BMJ USA; and bmj.com will sometimes offer users the opportunity to click on special tables and resources that BMJ USA has inserted to "Americanise" these articles. And, of course, online BMJ USA will offer readers complete access to new articles that never appeared in the BMJ. Visit www.bmj.com/bmjusa to see more.

Richard Smith, editor. 

BMJ, (rsmith{at}bmj.com)

Steven H Woolf, editor. 

BMJ USA, (swoolf{at}mail2.vcu.edu)