The Lancet Rheumatology and Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases have shaken off their post-pandemic impact factor slump, while Nature Reviews Rheumatology has tightened its grip on the top spot.
Rheumatology’s publishing hierarchy has reshuffled again, with the latest Journal Citation Reports showing a sharp rebound for two of the field’s most influential journals after several years of post-pandemic lull.
The standout performer is The Lancet Rheumatology, which recorded one of the largest gains anywhere in the specialty.
Its impact factor jumped from 16.4 in 2025 to 29.5 this year, an increase of almost 80%, cementing its position as the second-ranked rheumatology journal behind Nature Reviews Rheumatology.
The figures suggest the rebound was driven by a combination of recovering citation patterns across medical publishing and an exceptionally strong cohort of highly cited papers.
Leading the charge were a series of Global Burden of Disease (GBD) analyses published in 2023 and 2024. The journal’s paper on the global burden of osteoarthritis generated 656 citations contributing to the 2025 impact factor calculation, making it by far the biggest citation driver. Other GBD studies on low back pain (423 citations), rheumatoid arthritis (241), musculoskeletal disorders (138), gout (135), and neck pain (104) also featured among the journal’s top-performing papers.
Collectively, those six articles contributed more than 1600 citations, highlighting the enormous influence of large international epidemiological studies that are routinely cited across multiple specialties.
Australian rheumatology researchers have played a starring role in The Lancet Rheumatology’s dramatic impact factor rebound, contributing to these blockbuster papers.
The osteoarthritis study team included Australian researchers Professor Lyn March and Professor Peter Brooks, Professor Andrew Briggs, Professor Rachelle Buchbinder, Dr Benny Antony, Associate Professor Katie de Luca, Associate Professor Tiffany Gill, Professor Catherine Hill and Professor Helen Slater among its collaborators, representing institutions including Monash University, the University of Sydney, the University of Adelaide, Curtin University, Macquarie University, and the University of Tasmania.
Australia’s contribution was even more prominent in the rheumatoid arthritis paper, with Professor Lyn March and Professor Peter Brooks part of the leadership team and University of Sydney researcher Dr Marita Cross the corresponding author. They were joined by fellow Australian collaborators including the same cohort who worked on the osteoarthritis study.
While the GBD papers involved hundreds of researchers from around the world, each of the flagship musculoskeletal studies included around a dozen Australian-affiliated investigators, underscoring Australia’s influence within one of the largest international epidemiological collaborations.
Meanwhile, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases also enjoyed a strong recovery, climbing from 20.6 to 24.0 after a dip last year.
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While still short of the extraordinary citation levels seen during the covid era, the Elsevier-owned title appears to have regained much of the ground it lost as pandemic-related publishing normalised.
The renewed momentum follows several years in which many high-impact medical journals saw citation metrics fall as the flood of covid research subsided.
For rheumatology’s leading clinical journals, the latest figures suggest that highly cited original research is once again driving sustained growth rather than pandemic-driven citation spikes.
At the top of the table, however, little has changed.
Nature Reviews Rheumatology retained its crown with an impact factor of 33.7, edging up from 32.7 last year and maintaining a comfortable lead over the rest of the field. As a review journal, it continues to benefit from publishing authoritative syntheses that consistently attract high citation rates.
However, not every flagship title has shared in the recovery.
Arthritis & Rheumatology, the American College of Rheumatology’s flagship journal, continued its gradual downward trend, slipping from 10.9 to 9.9.
While the decline is modest and the journal remains in the top quartile, it now sits much closer to Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, which is edited by Australian rheumatologist Professor David Hunter, posted an impact factor of 9.2.
The rest of the top 10 remained relatively stable. Best Practice & Research: Clinical Rheumatology climbed to 7.0, while Arthritis Research & Therapy and Current Opinion in Rheumatology were tied on 5.4.
RMD Open followed closely on 5.3, ahead of Joint Bone Spine on 5.0 and Current Rheumatology Reports on 4.9. Rheumatology rounded out the leading group with an impact factor of 4.7.
The latest Journal Citation Reports include 58 journals in the rheumatology category, the majority remaining in the Science Citation Index Expanded.
Although the journal impact factor continues to dominate conversations around academic publishing, it remains a journal-level metric rather than a measure of the quality or impact of individual papers, and many institutions now encourage it to be interpreted alongside broader indicators of research influence.
Even so, for the editors competing for the best manuscripts, and the researchers deciding where to submit them, the latest rankings signal that rheumatology’s premier journals have largely emerged from their post-covid correction and are once again widening the gap between themselves and the rest of the field.
