In good old tradition, including being too late, I provide here the JCR 2016 data for the top 40 journals indexed by what is now Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science in the subject area “Ecology”, released in June 2017 (see footnote 1). For comparison, see my old posts, summarizing the JCR 2015, JCR 2014, JCR 2013, JCR 2012, JCR 2011 and JCR 2010.
Statistical fluctuations aside, it seems to me that the current situation is relatively stable. Global change / large scale journals such as GCB and GEB are still going strong, but it looks as if they are not growing as fast as in previous years. It might be too early to tell, but I’d venture a guess that the IF for these newer large-scale ecology fields will saturate over the next years. Also, it hurts me a bit to see that the IFs of the more theory-oriented journals such as AmNat and Oikos are still not really keeping up with the with the rest of ecology.
| Rank ’16 | Journal | Publications | IF’16 | 5-yr IF ’16 |
| 1 | TRENDS IN ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION | 72 | 15.27 | 18.35 |
| 2 | Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics | 22 | 10.18 | 14.57 |
| 3 | ISME Journal | 255 | 9.66 | 11.63 |
| 4 | ECOLOGY LETTERS | 146 | 9.45 | 13.33 |
| 5 | ECOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS | 29 | 8.76 | 10.22 |
| 6 | GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY | 311 | 8.5 | 9.46 |
| 7 | FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT | 51 | 8.04 | 10.84 |
| 8 | Molecular Ecology Resources | 121 | 7.33 | 6.54 |
| 9 | MOLECULAR ECOLOGY | 392 | 6.09 | 6.64 |
| 10 | GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY | 130 | 6.05 | 7.53 |
| 11 | JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY | 160 | 5.81 | 6.5 |
| 12 | WILDLIFE MONOGRAPHS | 3 | 5.75 | 5.22 |
| 13 | Methods in Ecology and Evolution | 160 | 5.71 | 8.63 |
| 14 | FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY | 188 | 5.63 | 5.82 |
| 15 | JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY | 186 | 5.3 | 5.99 |
| 16 | Advances in Ecological Research | 6 | 5.06 | 6.84 |
| 17 | PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES | 542 | 4.94 | 5.42 |
| 18 | ECOGRAPHY | 123 | 4.9 | 5.37 |
| 19 | CONSERVATION BIOLOGY | 123 | 4.84 | 5.09 |
| 20 | ECOLOGY | 325 | 4.81 | 5.77 |
| 21 | LANDSCAPE AND URBAN PLANNING | 134 | 4.56 | 5.02 |
| 22 | BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY | 10 | 4.56 | 6.19 |
| 23 | JOURNAL OF ANIMAL ECOLOGY | 145 | 4.47 | 5.06 |
| 24 | DIVERSITY AND DISTRIBUTIONS | 110 | 4.39 | 5.27 |
| 25 | ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS | 202 | 4.31 | 4.93 |
| 26 | JOURNAL OF BIOGEOGRAPHY | 205 | 4.25 | 4.89 |
| 27 | EVOLUTION | 234 | 4.2 | 4.56 |
| 28 | ECOSYSTEMS | 100 | 4.2 | 4.78 |
| 29 | AMERICAN NATURALIST | 150 | 4.17 | 4.38 |
| 30 | AGRICULTURE ECOSYSTEMS & ENVIRONMENT | 486 | 4.1 | 4.68 |
| 31 | Ecosystem Services | 118 | 4.07 | 5.87 |
| 32 | OIKOS | 182 | 4.03 | 3.86 |
| 33 | BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION | 328 | 4.02 | 4.55 |
| 34 | HEREDITY | 114 | 3.96 | 3.95 |
| 35 | Biogeosciences | 416 | 3.85 | 4.62 |
| 36 | Current Opinion in Insect Science | 97 | 3.66 | 3.66 |
| 37 | MICROBIAL ECOLOGY | 180 | 3.63 | 3.75 |
| 38 | LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY | 161 | 3.62 | 4.11 |
| 39 | BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY | 216 | 3.31 | 3.24 |
1) Note that this post was published in May 2018, but backdated to June 2017 to better reflect the timing of events on my blog timeline
theoretical ecology 