About AME Medical Journal

AME Medical Journal

Overview and identity

AME Medical Journal is an international, open-access, peer-reviewed general-medicine journal published from Hong Kong by AME Publishing Company. It is known by the abbreviations AME Med J and AMJ, carries ISSN 2520-0518, and is hosted at amj.amegroups.org. Its About page defines its purpose plainly: to promote developments across the medical field, providing high-quality evidence to guide clinical decision-making for better global health outcomes. Unlike most AME titles, which are attached to a single specialty, AMJ is the publisher's broad, multidisciplinary medical journal.

The journal follows a continuous-publication approach, with articles published online as soon as they are ready, and since January 2020 it has been organised on a quarterly schedule. It is published by AME Publishing Company with support from Wolters Kluwer, under which its content is made available on Wolters Kluwer Health's Lippincott and Ovid platforms. The journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and states that it follows the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the standard ethical framework for medical journals.

The publisher: AME Publishing Company

AME Publishing Company was founded in July 2009 by Stephen Wang. The letters AME are interpreted by the company as Academic Made Easy, Excellent and Enthusiastic. Headquartered in Hong Kong, the company grew from its first titles, Journal of Thoracic Disease in December 2009 and Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology in September 2010, into a publisher of more than sixty medical journals, together with English-language and Chinese-language books and e-books. AMJ was created as one of the publisher's own flagship, brand-bearing titles, carrying the AME name itself rather than a specialty name.

The publisher's history forms part of the journal's own record. AME was included on Beall's list of predatory publishers, a widely debated listing of open-access publishers compiled by librarian Jeffrey Beall. AME did not issue an official response statement as a company, but in 2017 AMJ itself published Jaime Teixeira da Silva's commissioned editorial, Caution with the continued use of Jeffrey Beall's predatory open access publishing lists, a widely cited critique of the lists. That episode is documented on the publisher's Wikipedia record and in the journal's own archive, and later developments in the journal's history, including Scopus and Web of Science acceptance, are the context in which it is now usually read.

Founding in 2016 and AME College

The journal's founding is unusually well documented because Stephen Wang described it himself in the founding editorial, AME Medical Journal: burnishing AME dream, published as the journal's first article in 2016. In that editorial Wang recounted founding AME in July 2009, meeting DXY founder Stanley Li in Guangzhou on 21 November 2010, and receiving angel investment from DXY in early 2011 after Li urged him to think in terms of hundreds of journals rather than two. He then described the formation of the Board of AME College, the publisher's medical-training arm, at its first board meeting in Jinan on 28 August 2016, held on a rented boat for a sense of ceremony.

At that Jinan meeting the board decided to launch AME Medical Journal as the official publication of AME College, with Dr Shen, identified in the editorial as Yaxing Shen, recommended as the journal's first editor-in-chief. The journal's third-anniversary editorial dates its birth precisely to 18 October 2016, and describes its founding aim as bringing comprehensive academic knowledge to young physicians and surgeons in a vivid and interesting way, in turn benefiting patients, with a promise to challenge the traditions of publishing. The journal's ESCI announcement gives its launch as January 2016 in one formulation; the anniversary record and the founding editorial together anchor its establishment in 2016, with 18 October 2016 celebrated by the journal as its birthday.

Early years and article record

The journal marked its first three anniversaries with annual-report editorials that give a verifiable account of its early output. By its first anniversary in October 2017, the publisher reported 49 international peer-reviewed medical journals in its portfolio, and AMJ presented its first annual report. By the third anniversary, with data updated to 30 September 2019, the journal had published a total of 339 articles, including 29 original articles, 50 review articles, 28 case reports and 185 invited editorials focused on hot issues across a wide spectrum of medical fields. The large share of invited editorials is characteristic of AMJ's early model: a general journal building its readership substantially through commissioned commentary on current clinical questions.

Growth continued thereafter. In its March 2024 indexing announcement the journal reported that it had published 536 articles as of 20 March 2024, with an editorial board drawn internationally. Later directory data summarised in the clean record put the board at 103 members from 20 countries and corresponding authors from 26 countries by March 2024. Those figures depict a journal that, while Hong Kong-published, authors and edits internationally, as its stated mission requires.

Scope across medicine

AMJ's scope, as set out on its About page, spans the whole of medicine. It includes internal medicine, covering immunology, pulmonology, cardiology and neurology; surgery, including heart and thoracic surgery and orthopaedics; oncology, including thyroid cancer, colorectal cancer and palliative care; gynaecology and obstetrics; paediatrics; otorhinolaryngology and ophthalmology; and medical tests and health care, covering radiology, pathology, laboratory medicine, nursing and alternative medicine.

It further includes health policy and methodology science, covering public health, epidemiology and medical ethics, and biomedical science and technology, covering pharmacology, biomedical engineering and bibliometrics. Article types include review articles, original articles and case reports, alongside the editorials and commentaries that were central to its early years. That generalist breadth is precisely what distinguishes AMJ within the AME portfolio, whose other titles address single organs, diseases or techniques, and it positions the journal for authors whose work crosses specialty boundaries or addresses medicine as a whole.

Indexing: Scopus and Web of Science ESCI

The journal's indexing history has two major milestones, both announced by the journal itself. On 13 May 2021 AMJ was accepted for inclusion in Scopus, Elsevier's abstract and citation database. Scopus acceptance is a substantive external evaluation, requiring evidence of peer review, regular publication and editorial quality, and it placed the journal inside the citation system used for most university research assessment outside the Web of Science.

On 20 March 2024 a confirmation letter reached the editorial office recording that the journal had met the criteria for the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), part of the Web of Science Core Collection published by Clarivate. Articles published in AMJ from 2022 onward, beginning with volume 7, are included in ESCI. The journal's About page accordingly lists indexing in Web of Science ESCI, Scopus, Google Scholar and Ovid. Following ESCI inclusion, the journal received its first impact factor, reported as 0.8 for 2025. Bibliometric listings place it in the third quartile for general medicine, a modest but genuine position for a young generalist open-access title.

Editorial model and publishing practice

AMJ operates the standard AME editorial model. Manuscripts are submitted and handled through the publisher's systems, peer review is organised by the editorial office, and articles are published open access online, free to readers. Its continuous-publication practice, formalised in quarterly issues since 2020, is designed to minimise the delay between acceptance and availability. Wolters Kluwer's Lippincott and Ovid distribution adds a second, institutional channel alongside the journal's own website, placing its content in the hospital and university library systems that subscribe to Ovid.

The journal's Meet the Professor series and its interviews with editors illustrate its community-facing editorial style, inherited from the AME College mission of educating young clinicians. An interview with Professor Alan Sihoe, a Hong Kong thoracic surgeon and AME editor, published in the journal, discussed author support, editorial teamwork and bridging academic communication between East and West, themes the journal presents as central to its identity.

Audience and authorship

The journal addresses clinicians, researchers and younger physicians and surgeons across all specialties, together with readers in public health, epidemiology, medical ethics and biomedical technology who fall within its scope. Its authorship is international, with corresponding authors reported from 26 countries by 2024, and its editorial board, reported at 103 members from 20 countries, is similarly international. That composition distinguishes it from a purely regional journal: although it is published from Hong Kong by a Hong Kong company, its declared community is global academic medicine.

For authors, the journal's attractions, on its own record, are open-access visibility, Scopus and ESCI indexing, Ovid distribution, and a generalist scope that accepts work not tied to one specialty journal's remit. For readers, it offers a single venue in which reviews, original research, case reports and a large body of invited editorial commentary on current medical questions can be followed together.

Assessment

Assessed on its verifiable record, AME Medical Journal is a real, continuously published general-medicine journal with a documented founding in 2016, a named founding editor-in-chief, a traceable article record of 339 articles in its first three years and 536 by March 2024, Scopus acceptance in 2021, ESCI acceptance in 2024 with coverage from volume 7, and a first impact factor of 0.8 for 2025. Its history also includes the documented controversy of its publisher's inclusion on Beall's list and the journal's own published rebuttal of that list's continued use, a part of its record that any honest profile should retain.

For users of this directory, the essential facts are these. AME Medical Journal, AME Med J, AMJ, ISSN 2520-0518, is an open-access, peer-reviewed, quarterly general-medicine journal launched in 2016 as the official publication of AME College, published in Hong Kong by AME Publishing Company with Wolters Kluwer Lippincott and Ovid support, indexed in Scopus from 2021 and Web of Science ESCI from 2024, and available at amj.amegroups.org.