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Scienda

Top Rheumatology journals

The leading journals in rheumatology, 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: Rheumatology (NLM Broad Subject Terms).

Rheumatology covers inflammatory arthritis, connective-tissue disease, vasculitis and related autoimmune conditions, with journals from broad flagships to focused titles. This page ranks the journals the NLM classifies under Rheumatology by how often their articles reach the most-cited tier of the field, comparing journals within rheumatology only.

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% 4
  • Arthritis & rheumatology
  • Best practice & research. Clinical rheumatology
  • Current rheumatology reports
  • Osteoarthritis and cartilage
Top 10% 3
  • Arthritis research & therapy
  • Current opinion in rheumatology
  • The Lancet. Rheumatology
Top 25% 6
  • Arthritis care & research
  • Lupus science & medicine
  • Nature reviews. Rheumatology
  • Rheumatic diseases clinics of North America
  • Rheumatology
  • Seminars in arthritis and rheumatism
Top 50% 10
  • Annals of the rheumatic diseases
  • Clinical and experimental rheumatology
  • Clinical rheumatology
  • Connective tissue research
  • Joint bone spine
  • Lupus
  • Pediatric rheumatology online journal
  • Revista brasileira de reumatologia
  • Rheumatology international
  • The Journal of rheumatology
Unranked 13
  • Current rheumatology reviews
  • International journal of rheumatic diseases
  • Journal of clinical rheumatology : practical reports on rheumatic & musculoskeletal diseases
  • Modern rheumatology
  • Modern rheumatology case reports
  • Reumatismo
  • Reumatizam
  • Reumatologia
  • Reumatología clinica
  • Reumatología clinica
  • Revue du rhumatisme : maladies des os et des articulations
  • Scandinavian journal of rheumatology
  • Zeitschrift für Rheumatologie

36 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

Where are immunology and orthopaedics journals?
Immunology and orthopaedics are separate NLM disciplines with their own lists. A journal is ranked in its home field, so a basic-immunology or joint-surgery title may appear elsewhere rather than here.
Does a top band settle which journal to trust?
No. The bands rank journals by citation reach within rheumatology, not the validity of any single trial or guideline. Use them as one signal among several.
How current is this ranking?
It is recomputed about once a year over a multi-year citation window, and the calculation date is shown beneath the list. Recent, fast-moving work may not yet be reflected in citation counts.

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 Rheumatology literature digest — a daily email of new rheumatology articles, filtered by these same quality bands.