MEDICAL JOURNALS
VADS CORNER — Medical journals · Literature search · Asia-Pacific
Links and access checked 20 October 2026
This is the updated version of this page. The original version is archived at oldmjournal.html.
This is the list I sometimes reach for when I need the evidence behind a claim. It is arranged by what you are trying to do, not alphabetically: first the places to search, then the big general journals, then public health, infectious disease, specialty and vaccine journals, the journals closest to home in Asia-Pacific, and finally the publisher platforms. The aim is to get you from a question to the original paper quickly, because a news report or a review is only as good as the study underneath it. Journals that are free to read in full carry a green FREE flag.
A short method. Search in PubMed; get free full text from PubMed Central where it exists; otherwise go to the journal itself. Read the original paper, not only the abstract or someone’s summary of it, and check the figure, the population and whether the result was statistically significant.
FREE the whole journal is free to read: it is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals or states that it is open access (or it is free by design, like PubMed). No flag means I could not confirm that the whole journal is free; it may still have free articles. NEW added in this edition MOVED changed address or publisher
FREE the whole journal is free to read: it is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals or states that it is open access (or it is free by design, like PubMed). No flag means I could not confirm that the whole journal is free; it may still have free articles. NEW added in this edition MOVED changed address or publisher
Free full text first
Before you pay for a paper, try these.
PubMed Central · Europe PMC · DOAJ (open-access journals) · Unpaywall (a browser extension that finds legal free copies) · Free Medical Journals · the preprint servers medRxiv and bioRxiv (not peer reviewed).
On this page:
Search and full text Leading general journals Public and global health Infectious disease Specialty journals Vaccine journals Asia-Pacific journals Publisher platforms Related Vads Corner pages About the links
Search and full text Leading general journals Public and global health Infectious disease Specialty journals Vaccine journals Asia-Pacific journals Publisher platforms Related Vads Corner pages About the links
Search and full text
- PubMed (US National Library of Medicine) — the main index of biomedical literature. Start here. FREE
- PubMed Central (PMC) — the free full-text archive. FREE NEW
- Europe PMC — free full text and preprints, searched alongside PubMed records. FREE NEW
- Cochrane Library — systematic reviews of treatments. NEW
- ClinicalTrials.gov — registry of trials, with results where reported. FREE NEW
- Google Scholar — broad academic search, useful for finding a paper you only half remember. NEW
- Scopus — citation database (subscription).
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) — the index I use to confirm that a journal is genuinely open access. FREE NEW
- ICMJE — the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: authorship, trial registration and publication standards.
- Medscape (formerly eMedicine) — clinical reference articles and news.
Preprints
Preprints are posted before peer review. They are useful for speed, but treat the findings as provisional and look for the published version. NEW
PubMed shortcuts for topics on this site
Each link runs the search live, so the results are always current. NEW
- Nipah virus · Dengue · Japanese encephalitis · Chikungunya · H5N1
- Tuberculosis in Malaysia · Measles in Malaysia · Vaccine effectiveness · COVID-19 vaccines
Leading general journals
The weekly and monthly journals that publish the trials and editorials the rest of medicine reads.
| Journal | From |
|---|---|
| New England Journal of Medicine | Massachusetts Medical Society, United States |
| The Lancet | Elsevier, United Kingdom |
| JAMA Network (JAMA and the specialty journals) | American Medical Association, United States |
| JAMA Network Open FREE NEW | American Medical Association, United States |
| BMJ | BMJ Group, United Kingdom |
| Annals of Internal Medicine | American College of Physicians, United States |
| Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) FREE · CMAJ group publications | Canadian Medical Association, Canada |
| Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) | Australia |
| Nature Medicine NEW | Nature Portfolio |
| PLOS Medicine FREE NEW | Public Library of Science |
| BMC Medicine FREE NEW | BioMed Central |
Public and global health
- MMWR — the US CDC’s weekly report on outbreaks and public health events. FREE
- Emerging Infectious Diseases — CDC’s journal on infectious disease emergence and epidemiology. FREE NEW
- Bulletin of the World Health Organization FREE NEW
- Weekly Epidemiological Record — WHO’s surveillance reports, including vaccine position papers. FREE NEW
- Eurosurveillance — European surveillance and outbreak reports. FREE NEW
- Western Pacific Surveillance and Response Journal — WHO Western Pacific Region. FREE NEW
- The Lancet Public Health NEW · The Lancet Global Health NEW
- The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific FREE NEW · Southeast Asia FREE NEW
- BMJ Global Health FREE NEW
- Environmental Health Perspectives — environmental and occupational health. FREE MOVED
EHP joined ACS Publications at the end of 2025. The old NIEHS address (ehp.niehs.nih.gov) no longer works for the journal.
Infectious disease
- The Lancet Infectious Diseases NEW
- Clinical Infectious Diseases NEW · Journal of Infectious Diseases NEW (Infectious Diseases Society of America, on Oxford Academic)
- International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease — the leading TB journal. NEW
- PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases — dengue, chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis and other tropical infections. FREE NEW
- Also see MMWR, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Eurosurveillance and the WHO journals above, and the vaccine journals below.
Specialty journals
Cardiovascular and metabolic
- AHA/ASA journals (American Heart Association and American Stroke Association): Circulation · Circulation Research · Hypertension · Stroke
- JACC journals (American College of Cardiology)
- European Heart Journal NEW
- American Diabetes Association journals · The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology NEW
Oncology and haematology
- Journal of Clinical Oncology NEW
- The Lancet Oncology NEW · Blood NEW
Respiratory, ageing, therapeutics and regulatory
- CHEST — chest and respiratory medicine
- Age and Ageing
- Adis journals — drug therapy and pharmacoeconomics
- Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science — drug development and regulatory affairs NEW
- Postgraduate Medicine
- Priory Medical Journals — an older collection of medical, dental and veterinary journals
Vaccine journals
- Vaccine
- Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics
- Expert Review of Vaccines
- Therapeutic Advances in Vaccines and Immunotherapy (TAV) FREE
- npj Vaccines (Nature) FREE · Nature Medicine vaccine articles
- PLOS One — vaccines FREE
- The WHO Weekly Epidemiological Record carries WHO vaccine position papers. FREE
Asia-Pacific journals
- Medical Journal of Malaysia (Malaysian Medical Association) FREE
- Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences FREE NEW
- Annals, Academy of Medicine, Singapore FREE NEW
- Singapore Medical Journal FREE
- Hong Kong Medical Journal FREE
- Chinese Medical Journal FREE
- Medical Journal of Australia (also listed above)
- Regional surveillance: Western Pacific Surveillance and Response Journal FREE and The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific FREE (see Public and global health)
Publisher platforms
When you know the publisher but not the journal, these platforms list their titles.
- ScienceDirect · Elsevier journals
- Oxford Academic — journals A to Z
- Taylor & Francis journals
- Ovid (subscription database platform)
- Free Medical Journals — a directory of journals with free access
Related Vads Corner pages
About the links
- Checked 20 October 2026. Links were checked on that date, some by automated check and the rest by hand. If one stops working, tell me.
- How I decided on FREE. A journal gets the flag if it is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, or its own site says it is open access, or it is free by design (PubMed, PMC, the preprint servers). I did not flag a journal from memory. Many unflagged journals, such as NEJM, The Lancet and JAMA, publish some articles free; check the article itself.
- Access changes. A journal can change its model, and a journal’s home page is open to everyone even when its articles are not. PubMed shows abstracts free, and PMC and Europe PMC carry the free full texts.
- Journals move. Environmental Health Perspectives has just changed publisher and web address. If a journal link dies, search PubMed for a recent article and follow it back to the journal.