ISI 2012 impact factors for ecology and evolution journals

As in the last years (JCR 2011 and JCR 2010), I list here the 40 most highly cited journals labeled by the web of science under the subject “ecology”, with their 2012 and 2011 rank, and their respective IFs, together with the most important multidisciplinary journals for comparison.

Rank ’12 (’11)	Journal	Publications	IF’12	IF ’11
1 (1)	ECOL LETT	76	17.949	17.557
2 (2)	TRENDS ECOL EVOL	76	15.389	15.748
3 (3)	ANNU REV ECOL EVOL S	21	10.375	14.373
4 (6)	ISME J	208	8.951	7.375
5 (5)	ECOL MONOGR	26	8.085	7.433
6 (4)	FRONT ECOL ENVIRON	60	7.615	9.113
7(37)	MOL ECOL RESOUR	132	7.432	3.062
8(13)	GLOBAL ECOL BIOGEOGR	108	7.223	5.145
9 (7)	GLOBAL CHANGE BIOL	297	6.910	6.862
10 (8)	MOL ECOL	445	6.275	5.522
11 (20)	DIVERS DISTRIB	107	6.122	4.830
12 (15)	METHODS ECOL EVOL	123	5.924	5.093
13 (9)	P ROY SOC B-BIOL SCI	624	5.683	5.415
14 (17)	J ECOL	139	5.431	5.044
15 (19)	ECOLOGY	283	5.175	4.849
16 (26)	ECOGRAPHY	120	5.124	4.188
17 (12)	EVOLUTION	313	4.864	5.146
18 (25)	J BIOGEOGR	183	4.863	4.544
19 (24)	FUNCT ECOL	153	4.861	4.567
20 (18)	J ANIM ECOL	134	4.841	4.937
21 (16)	J APPL ECOL	156	4.740	5.045
22 (21)	AM NAT	156	4.552	4.725
23 (22)	CONSERV BIOL	114	4.355	4.692
24 (33)	PERSPECT PLANT ECOL	39	4.158	3.208
25 (23)	HEREDITY	116	4.110	4.597
26 (14)	ECOL APPL	174	3.815	5.102
27 (27)	BIOL CONSERV	271	3.794	4.115
28 (28)	BIOGEOSCIENCES	350	3.754	3.859
29 (44)	B AM MUS NAT HIST	8	3.485	2.905
30 (32)	J EVOLUTION BIOL	237	3.479	3.276
31 (29)	BIOL LETTERS	263	3.348	3.762
32 (38)	OIKOS	218	3.329	3.061
33 (43)	MICROB ECOL	181	3.277	2.912
34 (36)	BEHAV ECOL	173	3.216	3.083
35 (30)	ECOSYSTEMS	101	3.165	3.495
36 (10)	ADV ECOL RES		3.080	5.333
37 (37)	OECOLOGIA	314	3.011	3.412
38 (38)	ECOL ENG	247	2.958	3.106
39 (46)	J N AM BENTHOL SOC	0	2.957	2.800
40 (40)	LANDSCAPE ECOL	106	2.897	3.061
	NATURE		38.597	36.280
	SCIENCE		31.027	31.201
	PNAS		9.737	9,681
	PLOS ONE		3.730	4.092

I suppose the few discernible trends towards more methodological and broader scale journals simply reflect the current direction of the discipline. Methods in Ecology and Evolution makes another leap forward from it’s already impressive first IF of last year. As the editor in Chief Rob Freckleton notes

Impact factors are flawed. Period. Unless they are exactly equal to 5.924….

— Rob Freckleton (@RobFreckleton) June 19, 2013

Other than that, we see PLOSone somewhat decreasing in IF, it’s difficult to decide whether this is systematic or a bias through strongly increasing publication numbers. PLOS reminds us that

One more time: "It's the papers, not the journals they´re published in, that make the impact" #ImpactFactor http://t.co/DptsBnQ41k

— PLOS (@PLOS) June 19, 2013

yet, it seems not everyone has internalized this message – Nature reports that a record number of 66 journals have been banned for boosting impact factor with self-citations this year!

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