Academy's Publication Web Sites Rank Tops Among Physicians

Data in a new report from PERQ/HCI Corp. indicate that the Web sites for the Academy's journals American Family Physician and Family Practice Management rank among the top 10 Web sites for medical journals.

In its December 2006 survey, PERQ/HCI, a Princeton, N.J.-based company that studies readership of medical journals, asked representative samples of physicians which journal Web sites they had visited in the past 30 days. When responses from family medicine and other primary care specialties were tabulated, AFP and FPM came in first and second in numbers of Web site visitors. In addition, among physicians of all specialties, AFP came in second and FPM came in sixth out of more than 250 medical journals.

"I knew family physicians valued the AFP and FPM Web sites," said Bob Edsall, assistant director of the AAFP Publications Division. "The fact that they should score so well with physicians of all specialties, including hundreds of thousands of physicians the journals don't even circulate to, underlines the practical value of our content."

In related news, the Academy's consumer-oriented Web site, familydoctor.org, has been named one of the 10 most useful Web sites for medical information by the Medical Library Association, or MLA. The familydoctor.org site joins such other consumer sites as the CDC, Mayo Clinic and Medline Plus in being honored by the association. The MLA evaluates Web sites based on credibility, sponsorship or authorship, content, audience, currency, disclosure, purpose, links, design, interactivity, and disclaimers.