The NIHR Health Technology Assessment is celebrating its 800^th issue. This is a major milestone for a journal that has led the way in publishing full, accessible and public accounts of research funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme.

Launched in 1997, the HTA journal has generated an impressive track record, publishing 98 percent of HTA funded projects in the 10 years from 2002. This is a striking comparison to the general publication rate of 50 percent cited by Chalmers and Glasziou. Research publishing in the journal is also of high relevance to clinicians, being rated as more clinically relevant than highly rated articles publishing in the top 120 international journals. This demonstrates that the NIHR HTA Programme is successful in funding projects that generate outputs of clinical relevance.

Last year, the journal saw an impressive rise in its impact factor from 4.028 to 5.116. The Journal Citation Reports (JCR) show that HTA is now ranked 2 out of 85 in the Health Care Sciences and Services category. Health Technology Assessment is part of the NIHR Journals Library and supports the NIHR’s commitment to full and transparent publication of funded research. All journals in the NIHR Journals Library are open access and are free to search, view and download from the NIHR Journals Library website. The HTA journal is now in its eighteenth volume and the archive can be viewed here.

Professor Tom Walley, Editor-in-Chief, commented, “The NIHR Journals Library is a key repository for findings of real importance. I am proud of the success of Health Technology Assessment that has continually demonstrated that the HTA Programme funds work of the highest scientific quality, allowing policy makers, clinicians and patients to have confidence in its results.”

Reports provide a full account of the research project, including methods and a full description of the results. The full reports complement shorter articles submitted for publication in other peer-review journals which the NIHR actively encourages researchers to do as part of their dissemination strategy.