Dr Fiona Godlee is stepping down as editor-in-chief of The BMJ at the end of this year, after more than 16 years in the role. Fiona first joined BMJ as an assistant editor in 1990 and became editor-in-chief in March 2005, the first woman to lead the journal since its inception in 1840.
Under her editorship, The BMJ has become firmly established as one of the world’s most influential medical journals, defined by its mission to work towards a healthier world for all.
Fiona has overseen impressive growth in The BMJ’s impact and readership. The journal’s impact factor (an official measure of the importance or rank of a journal) has risen from 7 in 2005 to 39.8 today. The BMJ continues to be the most widely read medical magazine in the UK, and in the past five years, worldwide usage on bmj.com has grown from around 1m unique users per month to nearly 6m.
The BMJ has also become an investigative campaigner and a powerful force for change, continuously challenging the status quo - from highlighting research fraud and misconduct, campaigning for greater independence from industry influence and tackling the harms of medical excess, to advocating for action on climate change and championing patient and public involvement in research and healthcare.
Most recently, Fiona was instrumental in the UK government’s decision to abandon plans to allow households to mix over Christmas, almost certainly helping to save lives from covid-19.
Her important work during the pandemic was recognised last week when she won Editor of the Year in the prestigious Association of British Science Writers awards.
Fiona has also been the editorial director of BMJ, the company, helping it to extend its reputation as a pioneering publisher and champion of open access research. In 2011, BMJ launched what has become one of the world’s largest open access medical journals, BMJ Open. And in 2019, BMJ was a founding partner of medRxiv, the first dedicated preprint server for medical and health sciences. Today, a third of BMJ’s 70 journals are open access, promoting exchange of ideas and rapid access to knowledge, to improve health and healthcare globally.
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