Our impact: 2021

BMJ impact report 2021 | Supporting information needs during the global pandemic

Supporting information needs during the global pandemic

Throughout 2020 and 2021, we’ve worked hard to provide our knowledge resources to institutions and health professionals, wherever they are in the world. We envisage that the initiatives we’ve launched during this time will have a long lasting global impact.

Being the most valuable resource for health professionals

BMJ company is listed on Google Scholar as one the most credible

The BMJ , our flagship journal, publishes for a global audience, with its unique combination of research, education, and science journalism. From the outset, the pandemic brought an urgent need for relevant evidence- based information about the new virus. Traffic to bmj.com doubled, with over four million unique users and 10 million page views recorded every month throughout 2020. The BMJ was also one of the most trusted and influential news sources throughout the year. According to Altmetric, four of the top 10 scoring articles in 2020 were related to covid-19, all of which were published in The BMJ .

A new podcast for general practitioners and a weekly covid-19 podcast have drawn in thousands of listeners: the only exclusive interview by UK Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, 5 was given to The BMJ’s editor in chief and heard by over 10,000 listeners. In September 2020, nearly 10,000 people tuned into a rare, exclusive interview with America’s chief infectious disease scientist, Dr Anthony Fauci 6 . Also, The BMJ published an exclusive on the cabinet-level leak of the UK government’s plan to spend £100 billion on the Operation Moonshot programme. 7

sources on coronavirus alongside other reputable publications, including JAMA and Elsevier. Towards the end of 2020, as coronavirus infections and deaths continued to soar across the UK, The BMJ published a joint editorial with the Health Service Journal 2 . In it the editors in chief urged the government to reverse its decision to allow household mixing over Christmas to protect the NHS. The editorial was widely quoted 3 across BBC 4 national news outlets, and was used to challenge the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. Soon after, the government changed its plans.