Journal rankings · indicator year 2002
Choose a field to open its ranking, or a journal to find its row in its subfield’s list.
Domain ranking · 2002
Life Sciences journal rankings 2002
1,615 ranked journals · Domain
Life Sciences has 1,615 ranked journals in 2002. The median journal has an OJR of 0.63, below the world average of 1.00, up 0.01 on 2001; Q1 starts at OJR 1.12. The top three are Annual Review of Plant Physiology and Plant Molecular Biology, Pharmacological Reviews, and Cell.
Ranks and citation indicators: 2002. Journal access status and listed APC: source snapshot September 23, 2026.
Journals whose main subfield sits in this category and that published at least 30 citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) in 1999–2001, the window the 2002 score is computed on.
The OpenJournalRank Indicator (OJR) is a free, publicly available metric of a journal’s field-normalized citation impact, computed from open OpenAlex citation data. It compares citations to a journal’s papers from the previous three years with the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so 1.00 is the world average and values can be compared across fields. It is computed with the NCI3 method.
The middle OJR among ranked journals in this category: half score higher, half lower. 1.00 is the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type.
The dot is this category, the solid tick is the median of all ranked journals and the dashed line is the world average.
Share of ranked journals in this category that are fully open access, so every paper is free to read. Hybrid journals, which sell subscriptions and open single papers for a fee, are not counted.
Median list price of the article processing charge, in US dollars, among ranked journals in this category that list a price above zero. Journals with a listed APC of $0 and journals with no known price are left out of this median. The At a glance table below gives a second median that includes the $0 prices.
Fields in Life Sciences (5)
Up to All journals1,615 ranked journals
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Rank is the position by OJR within the list on screen; 1 is the highest. | OJR is field-normalized 3-year citation impact: 1.00 is the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so values compare across fields. The badge is the journal’s quartile in this list. | Citations per paper over a two-year window, counted from OpenAlex. It is not field-normalized, so compare it only between journals of the same field. ▲ or ▼ is the change from 2001. This is OpenJournalRank’s own count, not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. | Citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) published in 1999–2001, the window the 2002 OJR is computed on. A journal needs at least 30 to be ranked. | Share of the journal’s 1999–2001 papers that are free to read in any open-access form. The green OA tag next to a title marks a fully open-access journal. | List price of the article processing charge in US dollars. “$0 listed” means the listed price is zero; a dash means no price is listed. | The line is the journal’s OJR from 2000 to 2002. | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1Annual Review of Plant Physiology and Plant Molecular BiologyAnnual Reviews · United States | 10.64Q1 | 15.71 3.38 down from 2001 | 74 | — | — | ||
2Pharmacological ReviewsAmerican Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics · United States | 10.09Q1 | 21.58 2.43 up from 2001 | 72 | 3% | $4,500 | ||
3CellCell Press · United States | 9.79Q1 | 25.46 1.22 down from 2001 | 1,198 | 98% | $11,400 | ||
4Annual Review of Ecology and SystematicsAnnual Reviews · United States | 8.09Q1 | 8.23 0.29 up from 2001 | 62 | 4% | — | ||
5Nature GeneticsNature Portfolio · United States | 7.74Q1 | 18.31 1.54 down from 2001 | 1,133 | 15% | $12,690 | ||
6Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular StructureAnnual Reviews · United States | 7.11Q1 | 16.15 0.27 up from 2001 | 53 | 19% | — | ||
7NatureNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 6.77Q1 | 10.49 1.31 up from 2001 | 9,211 | 10% | $12,690 | ||
8Cognitive PsychologyElsevier BV · United States | 6.39Q1 | 6.15 1.31 up from 2001 | 54 | 7% | $3,570 | ||
9ImmunityCell Press · United States | 6.14Q1 | 18.52 0.57 down from 2001 | 476 | 100% | $10,400 | ||
10Nature ImmunologyNature Portfolio · United States | 5.89Q1 | 16.15 5.61 up from 2001 | 378 | 13% | $12,690 | ||
11Molecular CellElsevier BV · United States | 5.86Q1 | 16.00 0.12 up from 2001 | 745 | 88% | $10,400 | ||
12Nature Cell BiologyNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 5.23Q1 | 13.96 0.37 down from 2001 | 730 | 14% | $12,690 | ||
13The Journal of Experimental MedicineRockefeller University Press · United States | 5.12Q1 | 15.80 0.74 up from 2001 | 1,146 | 100% | — | ||
14Psychological ReviewAmerican Psychological Association · United States | 4.97Q1 | 5.97 2.08 up from 2001 | 227 | 7% | — | ||
15Frontiers in NeuroendocrinologyElsevier BV · United States | 4.90Q1 | 9.00 5.76 down from 2001 | 40 | 7% | $4,800 | ||
16Progress in NeurobiologyElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 4.81Q1 | 11.29 1.18 up from 2001 | 195 | 5% | $5,190 | ||
17Nature NeuroscienceNature Portfolio · United States | 4.76Q1 | 11.28 0.15 up from 2001 | 795 | 15% | $12,690 | ||
18Journal of Clinical InvestigationOAAmerican Society for Clinical Investigation · United States | 4.74Q1 | 10.72 1.79 down from 2001 | 1,577 | 68% | $5,200 | ||
19ScienceAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science · United States | 4.57Q1 | 5.93 0.04 up from 2001 | 13,227 | 4% | — | ||
20NeuronCell Press · United States | 4.52Q1 | 12.63 0.30 down from 2001 | 1,010 | 100% | $10,400 | ||
21Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesNational Academy of Sciences · United States | 4.44Q1 | 10.44 0.20 up from 2001 | 8,509 | 99% | — | ||
22The American NaturalistUniversity of Chicago Press · United States | 4.43Q1 | 4.61 0.33 up from 2001 | 428 | 4% | — | ||
23The EMBO JournalOASpringer Nature · Germany | 4.35Q1 | 11.29 1.42 down from 2001 | 2,051 | 96% | $7,990 | ||
24CognitionElsevier BV · Netherlands | 4.22Q1 | 5.39 2.25 up from 2001 | 197 | 13% | $3,910 | ||
25The Journal of Cell BiologyRockefeller University Press · United States | 4.12Q1 | 11.13 0.82 down from 2001 | 1,712 | 100% | — | ||
26Social CognitionGuilford Press · United States | 4.10Q1 | 2.70 0.70 up from 2001 | 64 | 5% | — | ||
27Brain Research ReviewsElsevier BV · Netherlands | 3.80Q1 | 7.30 1.96 down from 2001 | 226 | 2% | — | ||
28Sociologia RuralisWiley · Netherlands | 3.75Q1 | 1.77 0.41 up from 2001 | 89 | 16% | $3,920 | ||
29Human Molecular GeneticsOxford University Press · United Kingdom | 3.72Q1 | 9.67 0.02 up from 2001 | 971 | 16% | $4,390 | ||
30Progress in Lipid ResearchElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 3.69Q1 | 8.91 4.24 up from 2001 | 48 | 0% | $5,530 | ||
31The Plant JournalWiley · United Kingdom | 3.63Q1 | 6.35 0.47 up from 2001 | 866 | 58% | $5,450 | ||
32Annual Review of ImmunologyAnnual Reviews · United States | 3.61Q1 | 59.04 10.39 up from 2001 | 84 | 10% | — | ||
33Molecular Plant-Microbe InteractionsOAAmerican Phytopathological Society · United States | 3.53Q1 | 4.51 0.11 up from 2001 | 458 | 54% | $3,000 | ||
34Circulation ResearchLippincott Williams & Wilkins · United States | 3.42Q1 | 8.78 0.58 up from 2001 | 1,142 | 50% | — | ||
35Psychological ScienceSAGE Publishing · United States | 3.39Q1 | 5.67 2.38 up from 2001 | 287 | 6% | $3,900 | ||
36Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological SciencesRoyal Society · United Kingdom | 3.34Q1 | 4.40 0.67 up from 2001 | 1,088 | 99% | — | ||
37Ecology LettersWiley · United Kingdom | 3.30Q1 | 3.54 1.48 up from 2001 | 244 | 15% | $5,300 | ||
38OikosWiley · United Kingdom | 3.28Q1 | 2.97 0.12 up from 2001 | 753 | 16% | $3,640 | ||
39Behavioral EcologyOxford University Press · United Kingdom | 3.26Q1 | 3.27 0.62 up from 2001 | 301 | 26% | $3,906 | ||
40Developmental CellElsevier BV · United States | 3.23Q1 | 8.14no 2001 value | 97 | 100% | $10,400 | — | |
41Journal of Cognitive NeuroscienceThe MIT Press · United States | 3.22Q1 | 6.90 0.75 up from 2001 | 271 | 18% | — | ||
42The Plant CellOxford University Press · United States | 3.18Q1 | 5.68 0.29 down from 2001 | 1,300 | 98% | $4,934 | ||
43The American Journal of Human GeneticsElsevier BV · United States | 3.17Q1 | 8.88 1.22 up from 2001 | 1,374 | 86% | $5,150 | ||
44Progress in Biophysics and Molecular BiologyElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 3.15Q1 | 5.24 2.80 down from 2001 | 67 | 100% | $4,260 | ||
45Neuroscience & Biobehavioral ReviewsElsevier BV · United States | 3.10Q1 | 6.22 0.55 up from 2001 | 176 | 6% | $4,860 | ||
46Journal of NeuroscienceSociety for Neuroscience · United States | 3.07Q1 | 8.82 0.28 up from 2001 | 3,271 | 99% | — | ||
47Cerebral CortexOxford University Press · United States | 3.07Q1 | 7.40 0.48 up from 2001 | 313 | 31% | $5,038 | ||
48TrAC Trends in Analytical ChemistryElsevier BV · Netherlands | 3.07Q1 | 3.31 0.64 down from 2001 | 225 | 5% | $5,150 | ||
49FEMS Microbiology ReviewsOAOxford University Press · Netherlands | 3.05Q1 | 6.11 1.35 up from 2001 | 182 | 35% | $3,297 | ||
50Molecular and Cellular BiologyTaylor & Francis · United States | 3.04Q1 | 8.76 0.51 down from 2001 | 2,660 | 100% | — |
Citations made in 2002. Corpus-wide, 69.2% of core-journal articles and reviews published that year have at least one matched reference; the share varies by journal and field.
501 additional Life Sciences journals with metrics are unranked under this release’s eligibility rules: a journal needs at least 30 citable documents in 1999–2001, at least 80% of them with a subfield, and a positive world-average expectation. Ranks are within the whole category; filters hide rows without re-ranking. OJR excludes self-citations.
At a glance
Indicator year: 2002. Publication window: 1999–2001. How these summaries are calculated
- Ranked journals
- 1,615
- Window papers (baseline)
- 789,157 Change unavailable from indicator year 1999
- Median OJR
- 0.63 Change unavailable from indicator year 1999
- Rising journals (2025)
- 273
Window papers are the baseline paper population: citable papers (articles, reviews and conference papers) from 1999–2001 in all journals of the world-average baseline, including non-core journals, counted by each paper’s own subfield. They are not the papers of the ranked journals alone.
| Measure | Year series | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ranked journals | 1,416 | 1,528 | 1,615 | 1,712 | 1,731 | 1,801 | 1,865 | 1,956 | 2,004 | 2,096 | 2,222 | 2,355 | 2,484 | 2,599 | 2,705 | 2,838 | 2,923 | 2,983 | 3,027 | 3,037 | 3,015 | 3,000 | 3,030 | 3,032 | 3,014 | 3,016 | |
| Window papers (baseline) | 681,698 | 747,894 | 789,157 | 838,563 | 854,790 | 911,302 | 969,983 | 1,041,301 | 1,106,285 | 1,194,995 | 1,291,816 | 1,389,175 | 1,451,151 | 1,495,499 | 1,547,978 | 1,608,280 | 1,646,156 | 1,651,790 | 1,653,566 | 1,677,661 | 1,731,463 | 1,821,734 | 1,907,316 | 1,955,191 | 1,960,779 | 2,008,547 | |
| Median OJR | 0.59 | 0.62 | 0.63 | 0.69 | 0.71 | 0.74 | 0.778 | 0.810 | 0.813 | 0.869 | 0.8675 | 0.90 | 0.91 | 0.873 | 0.8678 | 0.83 | 0.8177 | 0.8180 | 0.80925 | 0.806 | 0.814 | 0.80931 | 0.80 | 0.784 | 0.77 | 0.79 |
| Measure | Category statistic | Eligible population |
|---|---|---|
| Journal self-citation share | Median: 2.5% | 2,489 journals |
| Retracted papers per 1,000 | Pooled rate: 3.276 per 1,000 | 2,252 journals |
| Output growth | Median: -7.1% | 2,737 journals |
| Open access share | Median: 99.1% | 3,016 journals |
| Listed APC (USD) | Median including $0 listed prices: $3,258 | 1,900 ranked journals with a known listed price, including $0 listed prices |
| International collaboration share | Median: 25.1% | 2,917 journals |
| Review share | Median: 0.3% | 3,016 journals |
| Articles-only OJR | Median: 0.79 | 2,965 journals |
| Uncited share | Median: 26.6% | 3,016 journals |
| Citation concentration | Median: 42.9% | 3,011 journals |
How to read these rankings
- OJR, the OpenJournalRank Indicator
- A field-normalized 3-year citation impact, computed from OpenAlex with the NCI3 method. It divides the citations a journal’s papers received by the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so 1.00 is the world average and 2.00 means twice as many citations as expected. Because it is normalized, it can be compared across fields. Read the methodology
- Quartiles
- Q1 to Q4 split the ranked journals of the list you are viewing into four equal groups by OJR. A journal’s quartile depends on the list: the same journal can be Q1 in its subfield and Q2 among all journals.
- Impact factor (2-year)
- Citations per paper over a two-year window, counted from OpenAlex. It is easy to compare with familiar impact factors but is not field-normalized, so compare it only within a field. It is not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. Why it differs from the Journal Impact Factor
- Rank ranges
- Each rank in the latest year carries a likely range from 1,000 resamples of the journal’s papers. Where two journals’ ranges overlap, the data cannot tell them apart, so treat neighbouring ranks as ties.