Nature, Nature Communications and Scientific Reports dominate the multidisciplinary science category of the 2013 Journal Citation Report (JCR)*, ranking first, third and fifth. The 2013 JCR, released this week, sees open access Scientific Reports move to #5 in the multidisciplinary sciences category, overtaking PLOS ONE. Scientific Reports and Nature Communications continue to be the fastest growing journals published by Nature Publishing Group (NPG).
Journal Impact Factors indicate citation impact at a journal level. Across the board, NPG’s open access and subscription titles perform strongly in their respective fields in the 2013 JCR. Nature-branded titles account for 10 of the top 20 titles (50%) in the 2013 JCR Science Edition, and 19 of the top 50 (38%), more than any other publisher. Seventeen journals rank #1 in 1 or more subject category. Nature remains #1 in the multidisciplinary sciences for the sixth consecutive year with an Impact Factor (IF) of 42.351. The most cited science journal in the world with 590,324 citations in 2013, Nature also had eight articles in Altmetric’s top 100 of 2013. Articles from NPG journals accounted for 18 of the Altmetric top 100 of 2013.
Scientific Reports established itself further in 2013, with over 4,000 citations (up from 500 in 2012) and an IF of 5.078, placing it in the top 7% of all 8474 journals in the 2013 Science Edition of the Journal Citation Report. A Scientific Reports article was #1 in Altmetric’s top 100 of 2013, and the journal had 5 articles in the top 100, demonstrating the attention received online in social and mainstream media. In 2013 Scientific Reports published over 2,400 articles and now receives over 500 submissions per month. The journal published over 2,100 articles between January and July this year and continues to grow rapidly.
Nature Communications remains #3 in the multidisciplinary sciences for a second year, increasing its IF to 10.742. The journal, which offers an open access option, now receives 1,500 submissions a month, 50 per cent more than Nature receives. The first six months of 2014 have seen over 1,500 articles published compared to just over 1,600 in the whole of 2013.
Sam Burridge, Managing Director Open Research, Nature Publishing Group/Palgrave Macmillan said: “Our open access journals are publishing quality research in their fields, making it available to the widest possible audience. Their growing reputation amongst researchers is reflected by citations, strong rankings in their subject categories, and growing submissions. Social media attention and news coverage reflect their reach to researchers and the public alike.”
The 2013 JCR indicates the quality of content, and citation impact, across NPG’s open access titles. Light, Science and Applications (LSA) received a first IF of 8.476 placing it at #4 in the Optics category, led by Nature Photonics. LSA joins over 50 NPG titles in the top 7% of titles in the JCR, including the open access journals NPG Asia Materials (IF 9.902) and Cell Death and Disease (IF 5.177).
A full list of IFs for NPG titles is now available on nature.com
*Data is taken from the 2013 Journal Citation Report, Science Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2014.)
**Altmetric is supported by Digital Science, a sister business to Nature Publishing Group