Here we go – another year, another set of citations, and another journal ranking by ISI Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Reports. Love them or loathe them, Impact Factors (IF) are immensely important for dictating publication trends. No, a high Impact Factor doesn’t mean your paper will receive hundreds of citations, but the two are correlated.
I’ve previously listed the 2008, 2009 and 2010 IF for major conservation and ecology journals – now here are the 2011 IF fresh off the press (so to speak). I’ve included the 2010 alongside to see how journals have improved or worsened (but take note – journals increase their IF on average anyway merely by the fact that publication frequency is increasing, so small jumps aren’t necessarily meaningful).
Principally ‘conservation’ journals:
- Animal Conservation: 2.931 (2011) versus 2.906 (2010) ↑ 0.9 %
- Biodiversity and Conservation: 2.238 (2011) versus 2.146 (2010) ↑ 4.3 %
- Biological Conservation: 4.115 (2011) versus 3.498 (2010) ↑ 17.6 %
- Conservation Biology: 4.692 (2011) versus 4.894 (2010) ↓ 4.3 %
- Conservation Evidence: no Impact Factor yet
- Conservation Genetics: 1.610 (2011) versus 1.255 (2010) ↑ 28.3 %
- Conservation Letters: 4.082 (2011) versus 4.694 (2010) ↓ 15.0 %
- Diversity and Distributions: 4.830 (2011) versus 4.248 (2010) ↑ 13.7 %
- Environmental Conservation: 1.927 (2011) versus 2.000 (2010) ↓ 3.8 %
- Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment: 9.113 (2011) versus 8.820 (2010) ↑ 3.3 %
- Global Change Biology: 6.862 (2011) versus 6.346 (2010) ↑ 8.1 %
- Journal for Nature Conservation: 1.864 (2011) versus 1.545 (2010) ↑ 20.6 %
- Oryx: 1.826 (2011) versus 2.185 (2010) ↓ 19.6 %
Some ecology journals that frequently publish conservation-related material:
- Ambio: 2.025 (2011) versus 1.705 (2010) ↑
- Austral Ecology: 1.824 (2011) versus 1.820 (2010) ↑
- Biology Letters: 3.762 (2011) versus 3.651 (2010) ↑
- Biotropica: 2.229 (2011) versus 2.169 (2010) ↑
- Ecography: 4.188 (2011) versus 4.417 (2010) ↓
- Ecological Applications: 5.102 (2011) versus 4.276 (2010) ↑
- Ecology: 4.849 (2011) versus 5.073 (2010) ↓
- Ecology Letters: 17.557 (2011) versus 15.253 (2010) ↑
- Journal of Animal Ecology: 4.937 (2011) versus 4.457 (2010) ↑
- Journal of Applied Ecology: 5.045 (2011) versus 4.970 (2010) ↑
- Journal of Biogeography: 4.544 (2011) versus 4.273 (2010) ↑
- Global Ecology and Biogeography: 5.145 (2011) versus 5.273 (2010) ↓
- Marine Ecology Progress Series: 2.711 (2011) versus 2.483 (2010) ↑
- Methods in Ecology and Evolution: 5.093 (2011)
- Molecular Ecology: 5.522 (2011) versus 6.457 (2010) ↓
- Oecologia: 3.412 (2011) versus 3.517 (2010) ↓
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B: 6.401 (2011) versus 6.053 (2010) ↑
- Wildlife Research: 1.323 (2011) versus 1.205 (2010) ↑
Some more general journals that occasionally publish conservation papers:
- BioScience: 4.621 (2011) versus 5.510 (2010) ↓
- Current Biology: 9.647 (2011) versus 10.025 (2010) ↓
- Nature: 36.280 (2011) versus 36.101 (2010) ↑
- Proceedings of the Royal Society London B: 5.415 (2011) versus 5.064 (2010) ↑
- PLoS Biology: 11.452 (2011) versus 12.469 (2010) ↓
- PLoS One: 4.092 (2011) versus 4.441 (2010) ↓
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA: 9.681 (2011) versus 9.771 (2010) ↓
- Science: 31.201 (2011) versus 31.364 (2010) ↓
- Trends in Ecology and Evolution: 15.748 (2011) versus 14.448 (2010) ↑
Based on percentage change, the biggest relative gains among the ‘conservation’ journals were made by Conservation Genetics, Biological Conservation, Journal for Nature Conservation and Diversity and Distributions.
On an absolute IF front, most journals haven’t made many huge gains or losses. However, there are some things to note; Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment continues to climb (it now is nearly on par with Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA), and while Trends in Ecology and Evolution is holding relatively steady, Ecology Letters is speeding forward – from a publishing perspective, it is easily the top journal in ecology and shows no signs of weakening.
ConservationBytes.com 
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Curious about how you select journals on your list. There are piles of wildlife and fisheries journals that are not here. Do you have an JIF minimum or did you just miss some? Thought I’ld help out with your nice resource! :)
Wildlife Biology 0.989
Journal of Wildlife Management 1.522
Wildlife Monographs 5.33
North american j of fish man 1.203
Fisheries 2.367
Fisheries Scinece 0.937
Canadian J of Fisheries and Aq Sci. 2.213
Turkish J of Fisheries and Aq sci. 0.591
European J of WL Res. 1.306
S Afr. J of WL Res 1.085
J of Insect Conservation 1.688
Chelonian Conservation and Biology 0.913
Herpetological Conservation and Biology 0.62 (first rating)
Insect Conservation and Diversity 1.705
Ecology and Society 3.310
Studies in Conservation 0.40
Animal Biodiversity and Conservation 0.92 (Not sure this is Thomson Reuter)
Bird Conservation International 1.25
Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 1.929
Tropical Conservation 0.54
J Zoo and WL Med 0.381
J WL Dis 1.45
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Thank you. I’ve tried to keep to the main sources of literature that are primarily conservation-focussed. I cannot list them all (nor do I think I’m strictly allowed to).
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Biotropica! (2.229)
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I forgot to mention the relatively new journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution” which received its first IF this year: a whopping 5.093! Congrats to Rob Freckleton & team.
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