The journal decided when it first started publishing the article type “that the cases should be fictional to protect patient confidentiality,” Robinson told us. “Apart from the case that led to the recent New Yorker article, all or almost all were cases of very well recognized conditions (such as congenital syphilis, fetal alcohol syndrome, serious trauma from ATVs, hepatitis C infection) where a single case report would not generate any interest or ever be cited.”

While the journal is indexed in Scopus and Web of Science, these articles are not. However, we queried all 138 DOIs in Semantic Scholar and found 61 of them have been cited at least once. Together they have been cited 218 times.

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