Archives of Surgery

About Archives of Surgery

Archives of Surgery — Journal Profile

Archives of Surgery was a peer-reviewed surgical journal published by the American Medical Association under ISSNs 0004-0010, 0272-5533, 1538-3644 and 2376-3590 — the four identifiers carried by this JournalsWorld record and confirmed as the ISSN set of a single OpenAlex source. It published its first issue in July 1920 and published under this title until the end of 2012. On 1 January 2013 it was renamed JAMA Surgery, as part of a renaming of all nine Archives journals across the JAMA Network. This profile therefore documents a completed journal run of more than ninety years, not a live submission destination: the title's archive remains heavily cited and historically important, its successor continues under a different name and different ISSNs, and the two records must be kept distinct. That distinction, and the evidence for it, is the central service this profile performs.

The successor relationship needs stating with precision, because it is easy to get wrong in both directions. JAMA Surgery, which has its own deep profile on this site as post 5538, carries print ISSN 2168-6254 and electronic ISSN 2168-6262. It shares no ISSN with Archives of Surgery. Bibliographically, the two are a rename pair — one continuing journal whose title and identifiers changed at the start of 2013 — rather than two journals that ever published in parallel. For citation purposes, a paper published in 2010 belongs to Archives of Surgery and should be cited under that name and its ISSNs; a paper published in 2014 belongs to JAMA Surgery. For library and database purposes, the ISSN sets do not overlap, and any record that merges the two ISSN sets into one entry should be treated as an error and corrected.

Quick facts

• Full title: Archives of Surgery
• ISSNs: 0004-0010, 0272-5533, 1538-3644 and 2376-3590 (the set carried by this record and returned by OpenAlex for source S61251237)
• Publisher: American Medical Association
• First published: July 1920
• Published under this title until: End of 2012; renamed JAMA Surgery on 1 January 2013
• Successor: JAMA Surgery (ISSN 2168-6254 print, 2168-6262 electronic) — zero ISSN overlap with this record
• OpenAlex source: S61251237, resolved through the ISSN endpoints for this journal's ISSNs at checking time
• Status: Ceased under this title; archive continues to be cited, successor title is active

History

The founding of Archives of Surgery is described in the published history of JAMA Surgery, which traces the combined title from 1920. In July 1920 the first issue of Archives of Surgery was published by the American Medical Association. William J. Mayo, a member of the editorial board, wrote the inaugural editorial and indicated that the new journal would follow the character and scope of its sister journals, which included Archives of Internal Medicine, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry and the American Journal of Diseases of Children. Mayo also addressed the obvious question of competition: two prominent surgical journals already existed, Annals of Surgery, established in 1885, and Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics, established in 1905. The trustees who founded Archives of Surgery believed, in the words preserved in that history, that a new surgical journal would help alleviate the publication burden of the other two while creating a sphere of its own that would be sufficiently useful to the profession to warrant its entering the field.

The editorship list preserved in that history gives the journal's early shape. Dean Lewis served as editor-in-chief from 1920 to 1940, covering the journal's first two decades. Waltman Walters followed, serving 1941 to 1942 and again from 1946 to 1961, with Lester Dragstedt covering 1943 to 1945. J. Garrett Allen served from 1962 to 1969, Richard Warren from 1970 to 1976, and Arthur Baue from 1977 to 1988. The same list continues into the modern era with Julie Ann Freischlag, 2005 to 2014 — an editorship that spans the rename itself — and Melina Kibbe from 2015 onward under the JAMA Surgery title. Readers should note exactly what that list is: a single editorial succession for one continuing journal across its two names, which is precisely why the 2013 change is correctly described as a rename and not as the founding of a new journal or the closure of an unrelated one.

The rename itself is documented in the JAMA Network's own announcement. In 2012 the publisher launched the JAMA Network as a system interconnecting JAMA and the nine Archives journals, and announced formally that, effective 1 January 2013, all nine Archives journals would be renamed — Archives of Surgery becoming JAMA Surgery alongside JAMA Dermatology, JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Neurology and the other renamed titles. The announcement acknowledged that the names had been revered for decades and argued that standardisation of format and integration into the JAMA Network would justify the change in the long run. For Archives of Surgery, the practical consequences were a new title, a new ISSN pair, a redesigned print presentation — and complete continuity of the journal's role, audience and editorial line.

Scope during publication

Archives of Surgery published peer-reviewed clinical and basic research across the breadth of surgery. The mission carried by its successor, stated on the JAMA Surgery masthead, describes the continuing purpose in terms that applied equally to the Archives title: to promote the art and science of surgery by publishing relevant peer-reviewed research to assist the surgeon in optimising patient care, and to serve as a forum on diversity, equity and inclusion in surgery, surgical workforce education and training, quality improvement, and the ethics and economics of surgical care. Contemporary descriptions of the Archives journal similarly describe original, peer-reviewed clinical and basic research articles addressing new operative techniques, important clinical findings and practical lessons from surgeons around the world.

The journal's actual published output, as classified by OpenAlex at checking time, shows where its weight lay. The largest topic groupings for the source were gallbladder and bile duct disorders; gastrointestinal bleeding diagnosis and treatment; peripheral artery disease management; abdominal vascular conditions and treatments; and medical history and innovations. Two features of that distribution repay attention. First, it is a general surgery profile, not a subspecialty one: hepatobiliary, gastrointestinal, vascular and abdominal work dominate, as they dominated general surgical practice. Second, the presence of medical and surgical history among its largest topics is real and distinctive — histories of the profession formed a recognised strand of the journal, and bibliometric work on surgical journals has noted a robust history-of-medicine series in Archives of Surgery in the late 1990s. A reader mining the archive today will find operative research, clinical series, vascular and gastrointestinal work, and reflective and historical writing side by side, and should search it with that breadth in mind.

Metrics — what was verified, and how to read it

All figures in this section come from OpenAlex, fetched for this profile. Both the print-era ISSNs and the later ISSNs of Archives of Surgery resolved to one source, S61251237, at checking time. That record reported 23,759 works and 718,770 citations, a summary h-index of 264 and an i10-index of 12,066. Its two-year mean citedness was reported as 0.0, which is exactly what a reader should expect for a title that ceased in 2012: a measure built on the most recent two years of publication has nothing recent to measure, and the zero is an artefact of the title's completion, not a judgement on its historical standing. The source's yearly counts end in 2012, with 300 works recorded in that final year, after 463 in 2011 and 389 in 2010 — a direct, checkable confirmation, from the same fetched record, of the 2012 cessation under this title.

These figures describe the Archives of Surgery archive only. They must not be added to, averaged with or substituted for the metrics of JAMA Surgery, whose post-2013 output sits under its own ISSNs and its own source record; and JAMA Surgery's modern figures — including the high Journal Impact Factor values reported for the successor in recent years — must not be read backwards onto the Archives title. Where this profile needs a successor figure, it says so and attributes it to the successor. The discipline matters because rename pairs are the single most common source of inflated or double-counted journal metrics in directories of this kind, and the correct handling costs nothing more than keeping the ISSN sets apart, as this profile does.

This record's earlier thin template text displayed an h-index figure that does not match the OpenAlex summary figure fetched here. As with the other profiles in this batch, the fetched and attributed figure replaces the unattributed template figure, and readers repeating the check through the OpenAlex ISSN endpoint for any of this journal's four ISSNs should reach the same source record.

The archive today, and how to use it

Although Archives of Surgery no longer accepts submissions — there is no submission route for a title that ceased in 2012, and any service claiming to place a new manuscript in Archives of Surgery is misdescribing the journal — its archive remains a working part of the surgical literature. Systematic reviewers covering long periods will routinely retrieve Archives papers; historians of surgery will find its history strand and its editorials a primary source for the profession's development across the twentieth century; and clinicians tracing the origin of a technique, a classification or a controversy will often find the trail leads into these volumes. When citing from the archive, give the citation exactly as published: the Archives of Surgery name, the year, volume and pages, and, where an identifier is needed, the ISSN belonging to this title rather than the successor's.

Researchers who want to publish new work in the journal that Archives of Surgery became should go to JAMA Surgery, not to this record. Its profile on this site (post 5538) documents a monthly, peer-reviewed surgical journal published by the American Medical Association as part of the JAMA Network, carrying ISSNs 2168-6254 and 2168-6262, whose stated mission continues the one quoted above. Current instructions for authors, current editorial contacts and the current submission system all belong to that title and are maintained by the publisher on the JAMA Network site. Nothing in this historical profile should be used as a substitute for those live instructions.

Indexing and discoverability of the archive

The Archives of Surgery archive is deeply represented in OpenAlex — 23,759 works under the source is the fetched evidence — and its papers remain discoverable through the successor's platform and the usual biomedical literature routes, under their original citations. This profile makes no database-by-database current indexing claim for a ceased title, because indexing statements properly describe live titles and their current rosters; for the archive, the practical questions are retrievability and correct citation, both of which are served by searching with this title's ISSNs, in particular the linking ISSN 0004-0010, rather than by title words that also match the many other archives journals in medicine. This site alone carries separate records for numerous unrelated Archives titles, and an ISSN-led search is the only reliable way through them.

Similar and related journals

The closest related record is the successor itself, JAMA Surgery (post 5538 on this site), discussed above. Beyond it, the two journals named in the journal's own founding story frame its historical position: Annals of Surgery, established in 1885, and Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics, established in 1905 — the two prominent surgical journals that Archives of Surgery was founded to complement rather than to displace, in Mayo's account. Readers comparing general surgery venues should compare like with like across these long general-surgery titles, and should be careful with the wider Archives family: Archives of Internal Medicine, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry and the other Archives journals were sister titles with their own scopes and their own 2013 renames, and none of them is a version of this journal.

Frequently asked questions

Is Archives of Surgery still published? Not under this title. It published from July 1920 to the end of 2012 and was renamed JAMA Surgery on 1 January 2013. OpenAlex yearly counts for its source end in 2012, confirming the cessation under this name.

Is Archives of Surgery the same journal as JAMA Surgery? It is the same continuing journal under its earlier name — a rename pair — but bibliographically the records are distinct, with no ISSN overlap: Archives of Surgery carries 0004-0010, 0272-5533, 1538-3644 and 2376-3590, while JAMA Surgery carries 2168-6254 and 2168-6262. Citations should use the name and ISSNs of the period in which a paper appeared.

Who published Archives of Surgery? The American Medical Association, which founded it in 1920 and renamed it within the JAMA Network in 2013.

Who was the first editor? Dean Lewis, editor-in-chief from 1920 to 1940, according to the editorship list preserved in the journal's published history; William J. Mayo wrote the inaugural editorial in July 1920.

What citation figures does this profile rely on? OpenAlex figures for source S61251237, fetched for this profile: 23,759 works, 718,770 citations, an h-index of 264 and an i10-index of 12,066 at checking time. Its reported two-year mean citedness of 0.0 reflects the title's 2012 cessation, not its historical influence.

Can I submit a manuscript to Archives of Surgery? No. New work for this journal line goes to its successor, JAMA Surgery, through the JAMA Network; any third party offering submission to Archives of Surgery itself is misdescribing a ceased title.

Editorial character and the journal's place in surgical publishing

Understanding why Archives of Surgery held the position it did helps a reader use its archive well. The journal was founded by a national medical association rather than by a commercial publisher or a single specialty society, and that origin shaped its character in two lasting ways. First, it spoke to surgery as a whole profession. Where a society journal naturally privileges the questions of its own membership, an association journal owned by the American Medical Association was positioned to publish across general surgery and its emerging branches, to carry editorials on the organisation, training and ethics of surgery as well as operative research, and to act as a record of the profession talking to itself. The founding editorial's framing — a new journal that would take pressure off the existing leaders while occupying a sphere of its own — is an early statement of exactly that general, profession-wide ambition.

Second, the journal's longevity under one publisher gave it unusual continuity of standards and of audience. A surgeon reading Archives of Surgery in the 1990s was reading the direct continuation of the journal their teachers had read in the 1950s, with an unbroken volume sequence and an editorial succession, set out above, that can be traced name by name from 1920 forward. That continuity is a large part of why its older papers remain citable currency rather than antiquarian curiosities: later authors could assume a shared reference point, and did, which is one mechanism behind the 718,770 citations OpenAlex attributes to the source. Continuity also explains the strength of its non-operative strands. A journal confident in a permanent professional audience can sustain a history series, workforce commentary and ethical debate alongside case series and trials, and the OpenAlex topic profile — with medical history and innovations among its largest groupings — shows that Archives of Surgery did exactly that, to a degree its more narrowly clinical competitors did not.

For a modern reader, the practical lesson is to approach the archive in layers. The operative and clinical layers answer questions about how techniques and outcomes developed, and they must be read with the standards of their era in mind: a case series from the 1960s is evidence about practice and reasoning in the 1960s, and only indirect evidence about what should be done now. The editorial and historical layers answer different questions — how the profession understood itself, trained its members and argued about its future — and for those questions the archive is a primary source of the first rank, not a secondary summary. Keeping those layers separate, and citing each paper for the kind of evidence it can actually supply, is the mark of a careful user of this journal, and it is the approach systematic reviewers and historians alike should bring to a title of this age and depth.

One further caution for archive users deserves record. Because the Archives family was renamed as a group in 2013, citations to any Archives journal from before that year and citations to its JAMA successor from after it are frequently interleaved in reference lists, in syllabi and in database exports, and automated tools that normalise journal names sometimes rewrite the older citations into the newer name. That rewriting is an error, however convenient it looks: it falsifies the historical record, it breaks ISSN-based retrieval, and it can distort citation counts for both titles. Authors preparing reference lists that span 2013 should check each surgical citation against its actual year of publication and restore the Archives of Surgery name wherever the paper genuinely appeared under it.