Clinical Infectious Diseases

About Clinical Infectious Diseases

About Clinical Infectious Diseases

Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID) is one of the world's leading medical journals in infectious diseases, published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). The journal publishes practice-changing original research, reviews, clinical practice guidelines, and perspectives that clinicians can use directly when caring for patients — covering the clinical presentation, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of the full range of infectious diseases.

CID sits at the top tier of its field by every major metric. Oxford Academic reports a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 8.3 (Clarivate), ranking the journal 8th of 141 journals in Infectious Diseases, 18th of 167 in Microbiology, and 20th of 183 in Immunology. Its 2025 Scopus CiteScore is 17.1, and OpenAlex credits it with an h-index of 484 and more than 2.1 million citations across nearly 38,000 indexed works — an extraordinary citation footprint that reflects the journal's role as the primary record of clinical advances in infectious diseases.

What distinguishes CID from its sister journals is its clinical orientation. While the IDSA's Journal of Infectious Diseases publishes bench-to-bedside translational science and Open Forum Infectious Diseases is the society's fully open-access journal, CID is deliberately aimed at the practicing clinician and the clinical researcher: papers are selected for their potential to alter the course of clinical practice. That mission has made the journal the home of some of the most influential clinical guidelines and landmark studies in modern medicine.

History: From Reviews of Infectious Diseases to CID

The journal's history begins in 1979, when the Infectious Diseases Society of America launched Reviews of Infectious Diseases under founding editor Edward H. Kass (1979–1989). In 1992 the journal was renamed Clinical Infectious Diseases to reflect its broadening scope beyond review articles into original clinical research — a name it has carried ever since.

The journal's editors-in-chief trace the arc of modern infectious-diseases medicine:

• Edward H. Kass — Reviews of Infectious Diseases, 1979–1989
• Sydney M. Finegold — Reviews of Infectious Diseases, 1990–1991; Clinical Infectious Diseases, 1992–1999
• Sherwood L. Gorbach — 2000–2016, a 16-year tenure spanning the HAART era, the rise of antimicrobial resistance, and the journal's growth into a biweekly publication
• Robert T. Schooley — 2017–2022
• Paul E. Sax, MD — 2023–present. Dr. Sax is Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Across these tenures the journal has published the guidelines, trials, and consensus statements that define modern infectious-diseases practice — from community-acquired pneumonia and catheter-related infection guidelines to the antimicrobial-resistance agenda-setting papers of the late 2000s and the flood of COVID-19 clinical research from 2020 onward.

Aims and Scope: What CID Publishes

CID's editorial policy is unusually explicit about what it wants — and what it does not want. The journal seeks practice-changing clinical research: original research that will alter the course of clinical practice, and strong observational studies applied to common clinical problems. The evaluation of current and novel treatments, microbiology, immunology, and policies as they relate to patient care are highly prioritized.

Manuscript types CID actively seeks include:

• Practice-changing original research — clinical studies with direct implications for care
• Clinical practice guidelines and guidance documents — expert, evidence-based recommendations (among the journal's most cited content)
• Clinical trials — phase 2 and phase 3 studies, or phase 1 studies of highly promising compounds, that will inform practice now or in the near future
• State-of-the-art reviews — comprehensive reviews of clinical controversies or complex clinical challenges
• Review articles — on diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, authored by recognized experts (early-career co-authors encouraged)
• Clinical perspectives — expert papers on patient care, practice, and education
• Innovations in diagnostics — evaluation of novel diagnostic tests
• Clinical policy and position statements — aimed at influencing care or public health
• Voices of ID — personal perspectives on the life and work of infectious-diseases professionals
• Supplements — collections bringing researchers together around important practice topics

Equally important is what CID does not publish: papers on basic mechanisms in microbiology, pathogenesis, or immunology; phase 1 trials of very early-stage compounds; animal-based research not directly applicable to current clinical care; early in vitro treatment data; and studies of assays unlikely to be clinically relevant. Case reports are discouraged unless so extraordinary they could alone influence patient care. Such studies are a better fit for the sister journal The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Editorial Leadership

Editor-in-Chief: Paul E. Sax, MD — Announced by IDSA in February 2022 and serving from 2023, Dr. Sax is Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. A widely followed HIV clinician-researcher and educator, he leads the journal alongside a large editorial board of section editors covering CID's full subject portfolio — from antimicrobial resistance and stewardship to vaccines, HIV/AIDS, mycobacterial infections, and infection control.

The journal's subject sections, which organize both its editorial workflow and its online browsing, comprise: Antimicrobial Resistance and Stewardship; Bacterial Infections; Clinical Practice and Policy; Clinical Trials; COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2; Critical Care and Sepsis; Education and Training; Emerging Infections; Endovascular Infections; Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice; Fungal Infections; Global Health and Neglected Tropical Diseases; Hepatitis; HIV/AIDS; Immunocompromised Hosts; Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology; Infections in Older Adults; Medical Education; Medical Microbiology; Mycobacterial Infections; Parasitic Infections; Pediatric and Maternal Infectious Diseases; Respiratory Infections; Sexually Transmitted Infections; Surgical Infectious Diseases; Vaccines; Vector-borne Diseases; and Viral Infections.

Journal Metrics

The following metrics are taken from the journal's official Oxford Academic "About" page (Clarivate and Scopus figures for 2025) and from OpenAlex (2026). Metric values are re-released annually; confirm current figures before citing them.

Two numbers deserve emphasis. A cited half-life of 8.3 years means the typical CID article keeps accumulating citations for nearly a decade — a sign of durable, guideline-grade content rather than transient findings. And more than 7.3 million full-text uses in a single year confirm that the journal is read, not merely cited: its audience of ID clinical researchers, department leaders, policymakers, and pharmacists consults it as a working reference.

Open Access and Article Publishing Charge

Clinical Infectious Diseases is a hybrid journal. Authors may publish under the traditional subscription model at no charge to themselves, or choose the journal's open-access option on payment of an article publishing charge. OpenAlex records the journal's listed APC at $4,763 USD (2026). Oxford University Press also operates read-and-publish (transformative) agreements with many institutions and consortia, under which affiliated authors can publish open access at no direct cost — authors should check with their library whether their institution participates before submitting.

OUP permits self-archiving of accepted manuscripts under its author self-archiving policy, so even subscription-route articles can become freely available in institutional repositories after any applicable embargo. Because funder mandates and institutional agreements change frequently, verify the current APC, license options (typically CC BY for gold OA), and embargo terms on the journal's Oxford Academic author-information pages before submission.

Indexing and Abstracting

CID is indexed in the principal biomedical databases, giving its content near-universal discoverability: Scopus, Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded), PubMed/MEDLINE, and Embase, with serial registration under ISSN 1058-4838 (print) and ISSN 1537-6591 (online). MEDLINE indexing and the journal's high citation metrics make it a standard source for systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and guideline development across infectious diseases.

Landmark Papers Published in Clinical Infectious Diseases

The following are among the most-cited articles in the journal's history. Every DOI below was verified as resolving in Crossref in October 2026; citation counts are from OpenAlex (October 2026) and continue to rise.

1. "Infectious Diseases Society of America/American Thoracic Society Consensus Guidelines on the Management of Community-Acquired Pneumonia in Adults" — Lionel A. Mandell, Richard G. Wunderink, Antonio Anzueto et al. (2007). The definitive US guideline on community-acquired pneumonia, one of the most cited clinical guidelines in medicine. ~6,217 citations. doi:10.1086/511159
2. "Bad Bugs, No Drugs: No ESKAPE! An Update from the Infectious Diseases Society of America" — Helen W. Boucher, George H. Talbot, John S. Bradley et al. (2008). The landmark IDSA white paper that framed the antimicrobial-resistance pipeline crisis and coined the ESKAPE pathogen framing for policy audiences. ~4,978 citations. doi:10.1086/595011
3. "Revised Definitions of Invasive Fungal Disease from the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer/Invasive Fungal Infections Cooperative Group and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Mycoses Study Group (EORTC/MSG) Consensus Group" — Ben de Pauw, Thomas J. Walsh, J. Peter Donnelly et al. (2008). The consensus definitions that standardized how invasive fungal disease is diagnosed and reported in clinical trials worldwide. ~4,930 citations. doi:10.1086/588660
4. "Dysregulation of Immune Response in Patients With Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China" — Chuan Qin, Luo-Qi Zhou, Ziwei Hu et al. (2020). One of the earliest and most cited clinical characterizations of immune dysregulation in COVID-19, published in the first months of the pandemic. ~4,795 citations. doi:10.1093/cid/ciaa248
5. "Guidelines for the Prevention of Intravascular Catheter-related Infections" — Naomi P. O'Grady, Mary Alexander, Lillian A. Burns et al. (2011). The CDC/HICPAC-endorsed guideline on preventing catheter-related bloodstream infections, implemented in hospitals worldwide. ~4,710 citations. doi:10.1093/cid/cir257

Note the pattern: CID's most influential papers are disproportionately guidelines and consensus statements — exactly the "practice-changing" content the journal's editorial policy prioritizes.

Publishing Guidance: How to Get Published in CID

Lead with clinical impact. The single most important question the editors ask is whether your paper will change what clinicians do. Frame your abstract and cover letter around the practice implication: which decision, for which patients, changes because of this work. Strong observational studies of common clinical problems are explicitly welcomed; marginal or purely descriptive work is not.

Respect the scope boundaries. Do not send CID basic-mechanism microbiology, animal studies without direct clinical applicability, early in vitro data, or phase 1 trials of early-stage compounds — the journal states plainly that these belong in The Journal of Infectious Diseases or elsewhere, and out-of-scope manuscripts are desk-rejected.

Guidelines and reviews have special rules. Review articles should come from recognized experts, and senior authors are strongly encouraged to include early-career investigators as co-authors. Check recent issues to see which topics have (and have not) received recent attention before proposing a review.

Case reports: think twice. Case reports are discouraged unless the case is so extraordinary it could alone influence patient care. If your observation is a single unusual case, a larger series or a different journal is the safer bet.

Choose your access route. Decide between subscription and open-access publication early. If your funder requires open access, confirm the current APC ($4,763 USD listed) and whether your institution's OUP read-and-publish agreement covers it.

Write for the clinician reader. CID's audience is ID clinical researchers, department leaders, policymakers, and pharmacists — busy professionals who want methods they can trust and conclusions they can apply. Clear structure, complete reporting (CONSORT, STROBE, or PRISMA as applicable), and honest discussion of limitations will serve you better than expansive claims.

The IDSA Family of Journals

CID is the flagship of the Infectious Diseases Society of America's journal family, published in partnership with Oxford University Press. Its sister journals are The Journal of Infectious Diseases (JID) — which publishes bench-to-bedside and bedside-to-bench translational science, edited by Cynthia L. Sears, MD — and Open Forum Infectious Diseases (OFID) — the society's fully open-access journal, edited by Roger J. Bedimo, MD. Authors unsure of fit should compare the three journals' stated scopes; the IDSA explicitly positions CID as the clinical-practice journal of the three. IDSA itself, founded in 1963 and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, represents more than 13,000 physicians, scientists, and health-care professionals specializing in infectious diseases.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the impact factor of Clinical Infectious Diseases?
The 2025 Journal Impact Factor is 8.3 (Clarivate), with a 5-year impact factor of 6.8. The journal ranks 8th of 141 journals in the Infectious Diseases category.

Is Clinical Infectious Diseases open access?
CID is a hybrid journal. Authors can publish via subscription at no charge or pay the APC (listed at $4,763 USD) for immediate open access; institutional read-and-publish agreements may cover the fee.

Who publishes Clinical Infectious Diseases?
Oxford University Press publishes CID on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

What is the ISSN of Clinical Infectious Diseases?
Print ISSN 1058-4838; online ISSN 1537-6591.

Does CID publish case reports?
Case reports are discouraged unless they are so extraordinary they are likely on their own to influence patient care.

What is the difference between CID and the Journal of Infectious Diseases?
CID publishes practice-changing clinical research for clinicians; The Journal of Infectious Diseases publishes translational, bench-to-bedside science. Basic-mechanism and animal studies belong in JID, not CID.

How often is CID published?
The journal's archive shows continuous monthly issue publication with frequent supplements; consult Oxford Academic's current issue listing for the exact current schedule.

Article prepared October 2026 from the journal's official Oxford Academic pages, IDSA announcements, OpenAlex, and Crossref records. Metrics and editorial details change over time; verify current values on the publisher's site before citing them in funding or promotion documents. For the complete archive of past issues and supplements, see the journal's Oxford Academic site.

CID and the COVID-19 Pandemic

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Clinical Infectious Diseases became one of the principal clinical journals documenting it in real time. The journal's early 2020 volumes carried some of the first detailed clinical characterizations of the disease — including immune-dysregulation studies from Wuhan that remain among its most cited papers — and it went on to publish influential work on therapeutics, diagnostics, vaccine effectiveness, and the long-term management of COVID-19. The pandemic years reinforced the journal's editorial identity: while basic virology went elsewhere, the questions of how to diagnose, treat, and prevent the disease in actual patients landed in CID. For clinicians and researchers studying the pandemic's clinical literature, the journal's 2020–2023 archive is an essential primary source.

Supplements and Special Collections

CID publishes supplements that bring together diverse groups of researchers around topics of importance in clinical practice — from antimicrobial stewardship initiatives to HIV, tuberculosis, and emerging-pathogen preparedness. These supplements function as field-defining reference collections and are among the journal's most heavily used content. Authors interested in contributing to a supplement should watch the journal's announcements on Oxford Academic, as supplement calls typically have dedicated guest editors and separate submission timelines from the regular track. Authors are encouraged to review the current calls regularly.

How Clinicians Use CID in Practice

Beyond citation metrics, CID's real-world footprint shows up in everyday clinical decision-making. Hospital antimicrobial stewardship committees cite its guidelines when writing local prescribing protocols; infectious-diseases fellowship programs assign its state-of-the-art reviews as core teaching material; and public-health agencies reference its consensus statements in outbreak-response planning. The journal's 8.3-year cited half-life — unusually long for a clinical journal — reflects this pattern: CID articles are not just read in the year they appear but consulted for years afterward as durable references. For the practicing clinician, the practical takeaway is simple: when a CID guideline or major trial changes a recommendation, it tends to change practice everywhere, which is why keeping current with the journal is part of staying current in the specialty.