[3] The journal launched on July 1, 1992, edited by Edward Huth, who was earlier the editor of Annals of Internal Medicine.

[4] As part of Primary Journals Online,[5] AAAS was responsible for the editorial processes and OCLC for the technology side.

[4] Submissions were lower than anticipated; Cliff McKnight and colleagues noted that "Paradoxically, although the system was designed to be accessed directly by readers, it seems to have received a more enthusiastic reception from the information profession than from end users.

[15] In March 2018, access was finally restored to over 50 of the around 80 articles by the digital preservation service Portico, with the permission of the copyright holder Taylor & Francis,[16] after Dickersin worked with the JHU Sheridan Libraries, including librarian Mariyam Thohira, to organize an effort to find copies of the articles from colleagues and in libraries.

[17][12][15] The journal was accessible with an online subscription, initially costing US$110 per year[7] via CompuServe and OCLC Net, using either GUI software called Guidon that used SGML[18] and ran on DOS on an IBM-compatible computer or the Electronic Publishing Service, a more limited ASCII format also available on the internet.

[24] OJCCT introduced what is now called continuous publication, publishing articles as they are accepted rather than in an issue,[28] with no space restrictions.

[4] In the first editorial, Huth promoted "the virtues of hypertext, the space electronic publishing offers for providing actual study data, and the ability to update meta-analyses".