Acta Medica Scandinavica

About Acta Medica Scandinavica

Overview

Acta Medica Scandinavica was a peer-reviewed medical journal devoted to general internal medicine, published from 1919 through 1988. It served as one of the principal scientific periodicals of the Nordic medical community and stands today as a ceased title whose legacy continues in its direct successor, the Journal of Internal Medicine, published by Wiley. Researchers encountering citations to Acta Medica Scandinavica should understand that they are looking at one chapter of an unusually long publishing lineage: the journal's ancestry reaches back to 1863, making the full title family one of the oldest continuous medical publication traditions in the world.

This profile presents an honest historical record of the journal under its Acta Medica Scandinavica title. Because the title ceased in 1988, current submission guidelines, article processing charges, acceptance rates, and editorial board rosters do not exist for it; the article states this plainly rather than inventing modern details. Where current information is given, it describes the successor title and is clearly labeled as such.

A 160-year publishing lineage: from Medicinskt Archiv to the Journal of Internal Medicine

The story of Acta Medica Scandinavica begins not in 1919 but more than half a century earlier, at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. In 1863, the physician Axel Key founded a journal called Medicinskt Archiv. At the outset it was a deliberately national enterprise: it covered the broad field of medicine but accepted contributions only from Sweden, written in Swedish. The ambition, however, quickly outgrew those boundaries.

By 1869 the journal had become recognizably international and was renamed Nordiskt Medicinskt Arkiv (Nordic Medical Archive). It now welcomed articles from across the Nordic countries, published in Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian, and carried abstracts in German so that the work could be followed beyond Scandinavia. This multilingual, Nordic-wide character would remain a defining feature of the title family for the next century.

In 1901 the journal was divided into two sections, one for internal medicine and one for surgery — a split that reflected the growing specialization of medical science. The separation became complete in 1919, when the two sections were established as fully independent journals: Acta Medica Scandinavica for internal medicine and Acta Chirurgica Scandinavica for surgery. The year 1919 is therefore the founding date of Acta Medica Scandinavica as a distinct title, even though its institutional memory stretched back to 1863.

For the next seven decades, Acta Medica Scandinavica published research in general internal medicine. In its later years it also began accepting contributions from the Netherlands, widening its catchment beyond the Nordic countries. Then, in 1989, the journal was renamed the Journal of Internal Medicine and repositioned as a fully international journal publishing articles in English from authors all over the world. The renaming marked the end of the Acta Medica Scandinavica title but the continuation of its volume numbering, editorial tradition, and scholarly mission.

The Acta Medica Scandinavica era, 1919–1988

During its seventy years under this title, the journal documented the transformation of internal medicine from a largely descriptive clinical discipline into a science grounded in pathophysiology, biochemistry, epidemiology, and later molecular biology. Its pages carried original investigations, clinical observations, and reviews spanning cardiology, gastroenterology, endocrinology, hematology, nephrology, pulmonology, rheumatology, and infectious disease — the full breadth of internal medicine as understood in the twentieth century.

The journal's Scandinavian base gave it a distinctive character. Nordic countries maintained comprehensive population registries, universal health systems, and strong traditions of clinical epidemiology, and Acta Medica Scandinavica became a natural outlet for the cohort studies, registry-based research, and meticulous clinical descriptions for which Scandinavian medicine was known. At the same time, its authorship was never exclusively Nordic; the journal's later openness to Dutch contributors and its English-language publication in its final decades made it a genuinely European journal of internal medicine.

Publication was handled for much of this period by the Stockholm publishing house Almqvist & Wiksell, a name that appears consistently in library catalog records for the title. The journal appeared in regular issues throughout the year, and like many long-running European journals it also issued supplements (Supplementum) carrying conference proceedings, doctoral theses, and thematic collections — the supplement series ran into the hundreds of volumes.

Title succession, ISSNs, and bibliographic identifiers

Because this journal changed titles several times, accurate citation requires care. The verified title sequence is:

• 1863–1868: Medicinskt Archiv (founded by Axel Key, Karolinska Institute)
• 1869–1900: Nordiskt Medicinskt Arkiv
• 1901–1918: published in two sections (internal medicine and surgery) within the same journal framework
• 1919–1988: Acta Medica Scandinavica (internal medicine)
• 1989–present: Journal of Internal Medicine

Library catalogs commonly record the print ISSN of Acta Medica Scandinavica as 0001-610X; readers working on formal citations should confirm this against the ISSN Portal or their institutional catalog, since identifier records for ceased titles are maintained by libraries rather than by a current publisher. The ISO 4 standard abbreviation is Acta Med. Scand. The successor title carries print ISSN 0954-6820 and electronic ISSN 1365-2796, with CODEN JINMEO.

A note on similarly named journals: Acta Medica Scandinavica should not be confused with the many other Scandinavian "Acta" medical journals that remain active, such as Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, Acta Neurologica Scandinavica, or Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica. Each is a separate title with its own history and ISSN.

Scope and content profile

Under the Acta Medica Scandinavica title, the journal's scope was general internal medicine in its full breadth. Typical content included:

• Original clinical investigations and observational studies
• Case series and clinical-pathological reports
• Review articles synthesizing developments across internal medicine subspecialties
• Epidemiological and population-based studies, a particular strength of the Nordic research environment
• Short communications and correspondence
• Supplement volumes devoted to symposia, theses, and thematic collections

Articles were published in English during the journal's later decades, reflecting the postwar shift of scientific communication toward English even in journals with strong national roots. Earlier volumes contain material in Scandinavian languages with German abstracts, consistent with the practices of the Nordiskt Medicinskt Arkiv era.

Historical significance

Acta Medica Scandinavica matters to the history of medicine for several reasons. First, its archive — stretching through the title's predecessors back to 1863 — constitutes one of the longest continuous records of clinical medical thought anywhere in the world. Historians of medicine use it to trace how concepts of disease, diagnosis, and therapy evolved across more than a century.

Second, the journal exemplifies a distinctive Nordic model of medical publishing: journals rooted in national medical societies and academic institutions, sustained by learned publishing houses, and oriented toward rigorous clinical observation rather than commercial appeal. The Almqvist & Wiksell imprint on decades of volumes is itself a marker of this tradition.

Third, the 1989 renaming to the Journal of Internal Medicine illustrates a broader late-twentieth-century transition in which European national journals repositioned themselves as international English-language titles. The continuity of editorship, publisher relationships, and scholarly community across that renaming makes the title family a case study in how journals internationalize without breaking their institutional memory.

Finally, individual papers published in Acta Medica Scandinavica remain cited in the modern literature, particularly classic descriptions of diseases, early epidemiological findings, and methodological contributions. The archive is therefore not merely of antiquarian interest; it remains part of the working scientific record.

Publisher and editorial governance

During the Acta Medica Scandinavica era, the journal was published by Almqvist & Wiksell of Stockholm, as recorded in library and repository catalogs. Editorial responsibility rested with Scandinavian academic physicians, in keeping with the journal's origins at the Karolinska Institute and its Nordic constituency.

The successor Journal of Internal Medicine is published by Wiley on behalf of the Association for the Publication of the Journal of Internal Medicine, appears monthly, and is led by editor-in-chief Bo Angelin of the Karolinska Institute. These current details are provided for orientation only; they describe the living successor title, not the ceased Acta Medica Scandinavica, for which no current editorial board exists.

Indexing, abstracting, and archival access

Content published under the Acta Medica Scandinavica title is indexed in the major biomedical databases under that title, including MEDLINE/PubMed and the Science Citation Index, with coverage extending back through the twentieth century. This deep indexing is one reason the journal's older papers continue to be discoverable and cited.

Full-text archival access to the backfile is available through Wiley Online Library, which hosts the complete archive of the title family including the Acta Medica Scandinavica years. University libraries worldwide hold print runs of the journal, and the supplement series is cataloged in national library systems. Researchers seeking a specific volume should search their library catalog under the title Acta Medica Scandinavica with the ISSN 0001-610X (to be confirmed against the catalog) rather than under the current title, since catalog records for the ceased title are separate.

Impact metrics: reading the record honestly

Because Acta Medica Scandinavica ceased in 1988, before the modern Journal Impact Factor era matured, there is no current impact factor for this title, and historical impact factors for its final years are of limited comparability with today's figures. This profile does not invent a metric for the ceased title. The following figures describe the successor title, the Journal of Internal Medicine, and are attributed to their sources:

• Journal Impact Factor: 7.6 (2025, via Journal Citation Reports as summarized in directory records)
• CiteScore: 19 (Wiley journal page)
• Acceptance rate: approximately 6% (Wiley journal page)
• Submission to first decision: median 4 days (Wiley journal page)
• Frequency: monthly; access model: hybrid
• Indexing: Web of Science, PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and other major databases

These figures illustrate the standing of the continuing journal but should not be quoted as metrics of Acta Medica Scandinavica itself. Anyone evaluating the historical influence of the ceased title should rely on citation analyses of its own archive rather than on successor-title metrics.

Open access and publication ethics

Questions of open access policy, article processing charges, and publication ethics frameworks apply to currently publishing journals. For the ceased Acta Medica Scandinavica, no current open access policy or APC schedule exists; its archive is available through institutional subscriptions and library holdings, with selected historical volumes in the public domain in some jurisdictions.

The successor Journal of Internal Medicine operates a hybrid open access model under Wiley's publication ethics standards, which include membership in the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) framework applied across Wiley journals, requirements for disclosure of conflicts of interest, ethical approval of human and animal research, and plagiarism screening. Authors considering submission today should consult the current journal's author guidelines on Wiley Online Library rather than any historical information about Acta Medica Scandinavica.

For authors and researchers: using this archive today

Authors cannot submit to Acta Medica Scandinavica — the title ceased with the 1988 volume year. New manuscripts in general internal medicine intended for this journal family should be submitted to the Journal of Internal Medicine through Wiley's submission system.

Researchers citing the archive should cite the title as it appeared at the time of publication: papers from 1919–1988 are cited as Acta Medica Scandinavica (abbreviated Acta Med. Scand.), not retroactively under the current title. Citation databases index the ceased title separately, and correct title attribution matters for bibliometric accuracy.

Historians and systematic reviewers should note the multilingual character of the early archive: twentieth-century volumes are predominantly in English, but nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century predecessor volumes contain Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian text, often with German abstracts. Full-text searching across the entire 1863–present span therefore requires awareness of these language shifts.

Frequently asked questions

Is Acta Medica Scandinavica still published?

No. The title ceased at the end of 1988 and was renamed the Journal of Internal Medicine beginning in 1989. The journal continues under the new title with Wiley as publisher.

What should I cite: Acta Medica Scandinavica or Journal of Internal Medicine?

Cite the title under which the paper was actually published. A paper from 1975 is an Acta Medica Scandinavica paper; a paper from 1995 is a Journal of Internal Medicine paper. Databases keep these titles distinct.

Where can I read old Acta Medica Scandinavica articles?

The backfile is hosted on Wiley Online Library as part of the Journal of Internal Medicine archive, and print volumes are held by university and national libraries worldwide. Some early volumes have been digitized into public-domain collections.

Who published Acta Medica Scandinavica?

Library and repository catalogs record the Stockholm house of Almqvist & Wiksell as the publisher during the Acta Medica Scandinavica era. The successor title is published by Wiley.

What is the ISSN of Acta Medica Scandinavica?

Library catalogs commonly record the print ISSN as 0001-610X. Because identifier records for ceased titles are maintained by libraries, confirm against the ISSN Portal or your institutional catalog for formal citation work.

Was the journal peer reviewed?

Yes. Acta Medica Scandinavica was a peer-reviewed medical journal throughout its 1919–1988 run, consistent with the editorial standards of twentieth-century European medical periodicals.

Key facts at a glance

• Title: Acta Medica Scandinavica (ceased; continued as Journal of Internal Medicine)
• Active under this title: 1919–1988
• Lineage: Medicinskt Archiv (1863) → Nordiskt Medicinskt Arkiv (1869) → split 1901 → Acta Medica Scandinavica (1919) → Journal of Internal Medicine (1989)
• Founder of lineage: Axel Key, Karolinska Institute (1863)
• Discipline: General internal medicine
• Publisher (this title era): Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm (per library catalogs)
• Successor publisher: Wiley, on behalf of the Association for the Publication of the Journal of Internal Medicine
• Print ISSN (this title): 0001-610X (library catalog records; verify against ISSN Portal)
• Abbreviation: Acta Med. Scand.
• Peer reviewed: Yes
• Current status: Ceased title; archive indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed and Web of Science; backfile via Wiley Online Library

Fields intentionally left blank: current acceptance rate, review turnaround, APC schedule, editorial board roster, and submission guidelines do not exist for this ceased title and are not invented here. Current-title figures are given above with attribution and clearly labeled as describing the successor journal.

The Nordic "Acta" tradition and sister journals

Acta Medica Scandinavica belonged to a wider family of Scandinavian medical periodicals that shared the "Acta" naming convention, a Latinate marker of learned-society publishing. Several of its sister titles remain active today under Wiley and other publishers, including Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica (psychiatry, founded 1926), Acta Neurologica Scandinavica (neurology, founded 1925), Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica (anaesthesia and intensive care, founded 1957), and Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica (women's health, founded 1921). Together these journals formed an ecosystem in which each major clinical discipline had a Nordic home journal, and Acta Medica Scandinavica occupied the central position among them as the journal of general internal medicine.

This ecosystem was sustained by a distinctive publishing infrastructure. Learned publishers such as Almqvist & Wiksell in Stockholm, Munksgaard in Copenhagen, and their counterparts in Oslo and Helsinki specialized in academic and scientific books and journals, giving Nordic scholarship a route to international readership that did not depend on the large commercial houses of London or New York. The gradual migration of many of these titles to international publishers in the late twentieth century — Acta Medica Scandinavica to Wiley via its successor, others to Taylor & Francis or Wiley-Blackwell — mirrors the broader consolidation of scientific publishing, but the journals' Nordic editorial identities have largely been preserved through society ownership and editorial boards rooted in Scandinavian academic medicine.

For bibliometric researchers, the parallel histories of these sister journals offer a useful control set: they allow comparisons of how journals with similar origins but different specialties evolved in impact, language policy, and internationalization. Acta Medica Scandinavica's own transformation into the Journal of Internal Medicine is the most complete example of this internationalization arc, since it involved a full title change rather than merely a shift in language or publisher.

Using the archive in systematic reviews and historical research

Systematic reviewers searching the historical literature should include Acta Medica Scandinavica as a separate title in database queries rather than assuming coverage under the Journal of Internal Medicine name. In PubMed, the journal appears under its own NLM title abbreviation, and MeSH-indexed records from the 1919–1988 period are attached to the ceased title. Failing to search the historical title can silently exclude decades of Scandinavian clinical research from a review.

Historians of medicine will find the journal's long run useful for several kinds of inquiry: the changing language of disease classification, the introduction and diffusion of new therapies (antibiotics, corticosteroids, antihypertensives) into Scandinavian practice, the development of clinical epidemiology as a discipline, and the professionalization of internal medicine as a specialty distinct from general practice. The supplement series, with its theses and symposium proceedings, is particularly valuable for understanding what the Scandinavian medical community considered important enough to publish in extended form.

One practical caution: optical character recognition quality varies across digitized volumes, especially for the earliest decades and for pages mixing Scandinavian languages with German abstracts. Researchers doing full-text mining of the archive should validate OCR-dependent findings against the page images where conclusions depend on precise wording.