Articles of epidemiological relevance may also be found in medical university journals. It is common among mainland Chinese universities to publish university journals that contain predominantly their own research outputs. These journals number around 2000 in total, of which nearly half belong to natural sciences [44] . University journals published by medical universities or medical faculties of comprehensive universities cover the whole spectrum of medical specialities. Some are indexed in MEDLINE, like the Journal of Peking University (Health Sciences) (cf. Table 1 ). The performances of 41 of these medical university journals have been analysed recently [36] and they varied greatly. Reform proposals have been suggested [44] . [48] . On the contrary, in mainland China, with its huge population and considerable number of scientists and medical professionals, the internal market for biomedical journals is substantial enough to sustain a sizable number of Chinese language journals. Thus I suggest that the size of the prospective market (as a result of the linguistic and political divide) plays a significant role in shaping the language trend of the world's journal publication.