Journal Impact Factors

The impact factor of a scientific journal is the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years. This year the impact fator for Annals of Botany has increased to 3.654, ranking it 26th out of the top 200 plant science journals, and AoB PLANTS impact factor has increased substantially to 2.273, giving it a rank of 57/200.

However, journal impact factors are very controversial these days and many people feel that there are better ways of measuring the importance of journals. One simple modification is to extend the counting period from two to five years, giving a better long term measure of journal importance. On this score, Annals of Botany scores 4.338, ranking it 22nd out of 200 journals. But there are other measures such as the Eigenfactor Score, a rating of the total importance of a scientific journal. The Eigenfactor is thought to be more robust than the impact factor, which only counts incoming citations without considering the significance of those citations. Annals of Botany has an Eigenfactor of 0.02603 ranking it 10/200 in plant science.

Whichever measure you choose to look at, you can be sure that you are reading the most important plant science in the two Annals of Botany journals The big increase in the AoB PLANTS impact factor is particularly impressive for such a young journal which is fast gaining a reputation at the top table.

See also:
The Annals measures up… “the Annals of Botany is amongst the ten ‘top publications’ in botany/plant science”