Research Trends in General Medicine: A Domain-Based Bibliometric Analysis of Three Leading Generalist Journals

To advance the field of general medicine, it is essential to characterize its research landscape. General medicine is divided by clinical settings into domains such as general internal medicine, hospital medicine, and family medicine, but their research characteristics remain largely unexplored. This study aims to analyze articles published in three leading general medicine journals - Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM), Journal of Hospital Medicine (JHM), and Annals of Family Medicine (AFM) - to identify the primary research focus of each domain and describe article themes. We conducted a cross-sectional bibliometric analysis of original articles published between January 1 and December 31, 2023. Articles were classified into seven research themes: "Clinical Research," "Public Health/Preventive Medicine/Epidemiology," "Basic Research," "Medical Education," "Quality and Safety of Healthcare," "Health Services Research," and "Others." A total of 717 original articles were included: 591 from JGIM, 68 from JHM, and 58 from AFM. The most frequent themes were "Public Health, Preventive Medicine, and Epidemiology" in JGIM (43.1%) and "Quality and Safety of Healthcare" in JHM (64.7%). In AFM, research topics were distributed among "Public Health, Preventive Medicine, and Epidemiology" (29.3%), "Quality and Safety of Healthcare" (24.1%), and "Health Services Research" (20.7%). This study revealed that general medicine, while diverse, has research focuses that differ by journal. These findings provide an evidence base for future strategic research planning, topic selection, and the development of domain-specific research support systems.