Medical journals published in non-English languages face a handicap: their worldwide readership and citation are reduced in comparison to journals published in English. This handicap is worse for small journals edited in developing countries, regardless of whether they publish original research articles including abstracts in English. To facilitate the international diffusion of selected Chilean scientific journals, the "Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica" enforced the program "SciELO Chile" with a web site in Internet (www.scielo.cl) including the full text of articles published in recent issues. Revista Médica de Chile is the first Chilean medical journal that appears in this web site, sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, Washington D.C. We expect that this web site will give a favorable input to authors of articles published in our journal (Rev Med Chile 2001; 129: 131-32).