Top Medical Oncology journals
The leading journals in medical oncology, ranked within their own field — not across all of science. The measure is computed from open data; how it works, and its limits, are set out in our method.
Scope: Antineoplastic Agents, Neoplasms, Radiotherapy (NLM Broad Subject Terms).
Grouped by quality band, best first, and listed alphabetically within each band — the bands are the ranking; we do not order named journals against one another.
Top 5%
16
- CA: a cancer journal for clinicians
- Cancer cell
- Cancer discovery
- Cancer treatment reviews
- Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research
- Drug resistance updates : reviews and commentaries in antimicrobial and anticancer chemotherapy
- International journal of radiation oncology, biology, physics
- Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology
- Journal of experimental & clinical cancer research : CR
- Molecular cancer
- Nature cancer
- Nature reviews. Cancer
- Radiation oncology
- Radiotherapy and oncology : journal of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology
- Seminars in cancer biology
- The Lancet. Oncology
Top 10%
11
- American Society of Clinical Oncology educational book
- Annals of oncology : official journal of the European Society for Medical Oncology
- Cancer letters
- Cancer metastasis reviews
- Cancer research
- Chinese journal of cancer
- Journal of the National Cancer Institute
- Medical physics
- Nature reviews. Clinical oncology
- Neuro-oncology
- Trends in cancer
Top 25%
29
- BMC cancer
- Breast cancer research : BCR
- British journal of cancer
- Cancer
- Cancer biology & medicine
- Cancer science
- Current oncology reports
- Current treatment options in oncology
- European journal of cancer : official journal for European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) [and] European Association for Cancer Research (EACR)
- European journal of oncology nursing : the official journal of European Oncology Nursing Society
- International journal of cancer
- JAMA oncology
- JCO clinical cancer informatics
- JCO global oncology
- JCO oncology practice
- JCO precision oncology
- JMIR cancer
- JNCI cancer spectrum
- Journal of cancer survivorship : research and practice
- Journal of oncology practice
- Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Monographs
- Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network : JNCCN
- Lung cancer : journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer
- Molecular cancer therapeutics
- Neoplasia : an international journal for oncology research
- Pediatric radiology
- Practical radiation oncology
- Seminars in oncology
- The oncologist
Top 50%
47
- Acta oncologica
- Annals of surgical oncology
- Breast cancer : the journal of the Japanese Breast Cancer Society
- Breast cancer research and treatment
- Cancer control : journal of the Moffitt Cancer Center
- Cancer cytopathology
- Cancer medicine
- Cancer nursing
- Cancer prevention research
- Cancer research and treatment
- Cancer research communications
- Carcinogenesis
- Clinical & experimental metastasis
- Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico
- Clinical oncology : a journal of the Royal College of Radiologists
- CNS oncology
- Current oncology
- Current opinion in oncology
- European journal of cancer care
- European journal of surgical oncology : the journal of the European Society of Surgical Oncology and the British Association of Surgical Oncology
- Familial cancer
- Future oncology
- Head & neck
- International journal of clinical oncology
- International journal of oncology
- Investigational new drugs
- Japanese journal of radiology
- Journal of cancer research and clinical oncology
- Journal of gastric cancer
- Journal of global oncology
- Journal of mammary gland biology and neoplasia
- Journal of neuro-oncology
- Journal of surgical oncology
- Journal of the Egyptian National Cancer Institute
- Medical oncology
- NAR cancer
- Oncology
- Oncology reports
- Oncology research and treatment
- Oral oncology
- Radiology and oncology
- Seminars in oncology nursing
- Strahlentherapie und Onkologie : Organ der Deutschen Röntgengesellschaft ... [et al]
- Surgical oncology clinics of North America
- Targeted oncology
- World journal of surgical oncology
- Zeitschrift für medizinische Physik
Unranked
52
- American journal of clinical oncology
- Anti-cancer agents in medicinal chemistry
- Anti-cancer drugs
- Anticancer research
- Asia-Pacific journal of clinical oncology
- Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention : APJCP
- Brachytherapy
- Bulletin du cancer
- Canadian oncology nursing journal = Revue canadienne de nursing oncologique
- Cancer biomarkers : section A of Disease markers
- Cancer biotherapy & radiopharmaceuticals
- Cancer chemotherapy and pharmacology
- Cancer investigation
- Cancer radiothérapie : journal de la Société française de radiothérapie oncologique
- Cancer reports
- Chinese clinical oncology
- Clinical breast cancer
- Clinical journal of oncology nursing
- Clinical lymphoma, myeloma & leukemia
- Critical reviews in oncogenesis
- Current cancer drug targets
- Current problems in cancer
- Current radiopharmaceuticals
- European journal of cancer prevention : the official journal of the European Cancer Prevention Organisation (ECP)
- Experimental oncology
- In vivo
- Indian journal of cancer
- International journal of surgical oncology
- Japanese journal of clinical oncology
- Journal of cancer policy
- Journal of chemotherapy
- Journal of labelled compounds & radiopharmaceuticals
- Klinická onkologie : casopis Ceské a Slovenské onkologické spolecnosti
- Leukemia research
- Medical dosimetry : official journal of the American Association of Medical Dosimetrists
- Melanoma research
- Neoplasma
- Nowotwory
- Oncology
- Oncology nursing forum
- Oncology research
- Oncotarget
- Radiation and environmental biophysics
- Surgical oncology
- The breast journal
- The cancer journal
- The International journal of biological markers
- The quarterly journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging : official publication of the Italian Association of Nuclear Medicine (AIMN) [and] the International Association of Radiopharmacology (IAR), [and] Section of the Society of Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry and Biology
- Tumori
- Tumour biology : the journal of the International Society for Oncodevelopmental Biology and Medicine
- Vestnik rentgenologii i radiologii
- Voprosy onkologii
155 ranked journals. Computed 2026-09-04, citation window 2019–2022. Journals too new or too small to rank fairly are not listed — “unranked” is not a zero.
Questions
- Why do high-impact review journals rank so high?
- The measure rewards how often a journal's articles are among the most cited in oncology, and widely-read review journals concentrate citations. That reflects reach and influence; it is not a claim that every article there outweighs primary research published elsewhere.
- Are haematology-oncology or radiotherapy journals in this list?
- Only if the NLM files them under Neoplasms. Haematology and radiation oncology are neighbouring disciplines with their own lists; ranking each journal in its home field keeps the page title truthful.
- Does a high rank mean a result published there can be trusted?
- No. This ranks journals, not individual studies, and the strength of a finding depends on the study, not the masthead. Use the ranking as one signal among several.
Spotted an error?
If a journal looks misclassified — the wrong discipline, a missing title, a band that seems off — please tell us at [email protected]. Every report gets an answer, and a confirmed error is corrected at the latest when the ranking is next recomputed.
What this is not
- This ranks journals, not individual articles: it says nothing about the validity of any single paper.
- It is not medical advice and no substitute for clinical judgement or reading the work itself.
- The ranking is factual and method-based, computed the same way for every title. Like any method that ranks journals, though, it carries bias and is not a definitive judgement on a journal's quality or relevance — neither an endorsement nor a criticism of any journal or publisher.
See also the Medical Oncology literature digest — a daily email of new medical oncology articles, filtered by these same quality bands.