Hey all,

 

I have a quick question regarding scientific journals. It's geared towards Biology/Biochemistry/Genetics, but not completely.

 

I've heard that being published in Nature is pretty prestigious. But what about the other Nature journals? E.g. Nature Cell Biology, Nature Methods, Nature Genetics, etc. Is it still good to get published in these?

 

What kind of impact factor is regarded as decent for a journal?

AFAIK, all of the 'Nature' spinoffs are considered excellent and high visibility.

 

However, I'd caution against overly relying on impact factor: if you have a choice of two journals, one clearly in your field and widely read, the other on the margin of your field but with an even higher impact factor, go for the former rather than trying to shoehorn your paper into the latter.

In addition to what Mokele said I just wanted to add that the Nature journals overall have an impact of around 10-29. So in specific areas there are higher ranked journals. And as always review journals tend to get a higher impact, however, often they will be treated as a special case.

Nature is not at all prestigious for my field (particle physics). In my field the high impact journals are Physical Review Letters, Physical Review D, Nuclear Physics B, Physics Letters B, the Journal of High Energy Physics and the European Journal of Physics C.

I was browsing Wikipedia the other day to look at impact factors. One of the highest was Annual reviews in Immunology - I couldn't understand why immunology was higher than other things.

It's a journal of nothing but review papers, which tend to get cited highly as they synthesize large amounts of research. The same thing goes for other journals - more review papers = higher impact factor. It's just one of the many deep flaws in the concept of 'impact factor'.

That was what I mentioned before. Reviews are a special case. But yeah, impact factors are overall a lousy measure. Unfortunately it is one of the few one really has. Otherwise people of a specific field can rank according to their own measure of prestigious journals (as Severian did), but for certain fields it is not easily applicable.

How about astronomy? What are the best journals in this area?

How about astronomy? What are the best journals in this area?

 

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.)?