In July 1920, the first issue of Archives of Surgery was published by the American Medical Association. William J. Mayo, MD, who was a member of the editorial board and authored the inaugural Editorial, indicated that Archives of Surgery would follow the character and scope of its sister journals, Archives of Internal Medicine, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, and the American Journal of Diseases of Children. Interestingly, Mayo also commented that Archives of Surgery would not compete with the other 2 prominent surgical journals that existed at the time: Annals of Surgery, established in 1885, and Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics, established in 1905. The trustees who founded Archives of Surgery believed that creating this new surgical journal would help alleviate the publication burden of the other 2 surgical journals while also creating a “sphere of its own” that would be “sufficiently useful to the profession to warrant its entering the field.”¹Archives of Surgery succeeded in that endeavor.

1920年7月，美国医学会出版了第一期《外科手术档案》。威廉·梅奥（William J. Mayo）医学博士是编辑委员会成员，并发表了就职社论。他表示，外科手术档案将遵循其姊妹期刊，内科医学档案，神经病学和精神病学档案以及美国儿童疾病杂志。有趣的是，梅奥还评论说，外科手术档案不能与当时存在的其他两种著名的外科杂志竞争：《外科年鉴》（成立于1885年）和《外科，妇产科》，成立于1905年。创建外科档案馆的受托人认为，创建这种新的外科杂志将有助于减轻其他2种外科杂志的出版负担，同时还创建了一个“自己的领域”，“对本专业足够有用”保证它进入该领域。” ¹外科档案馆在这项工作中取得了成功。