Journal rankings · indicator year 2019
Choose a field to open its ranking, or a journal to find its row in its subfield’s list.
Subfield ranking · 2019
Ecology journal rankings 2019
269 ranked journals · Subfield in Environmental Science
Ecology has 269 ranked journals in 2019. The median OJR fell 0.05 on 2018 to 0.72, below the world average of 1.00; Q1 starts at OJR 1.12. The top three are Global Food Security, The ISME Journal, and ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.
Ranks and citation indicators: 2019. 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 2016–2018, the window the 2019 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.
Subfields of Environmental Science (11)
269 ranked journals
Filters
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 2018. This is OpenJournalRank’s own count, not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. | Citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) published in 2016–2018, the window the 2019 OJR is computed on. A journal needs at least 30 to be ranked. | Share of the journal’s 2016–2018 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 2010 to 2019. | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1Global Food SecurityElsevier BV · Netherlands | 5.78Q1 | 9.13 2.17 up from 2018 | 149 | 57% | $5,240 | ||
2The ISME JournalOASpringer Nature · United Kingdom | 4.45Q1 | 10.66 0.08 down from 2018 | 717 | 100% | $4,153 | ||
| 4.44Q1 | 9.24 0.99 up from 2018 | 641 | 37% | $3,310 | |||
4Global Change BiologyWiley · United Kingdom | 4.29Q1 | 9.59 1.17 up from 2018 | 1,225 | 62% | $4,550 | ||
5Methods in Ecology and EvolutionOAWiley · United States | 4.10Q1 | 7.50 0.19 up from 2018 | 556 | 64% | $3,500 | ||
6Frontiers in Ecology and the EnvironmentWiley · United States | 3.79Q1 | 5.75 1.49 down from 2018 | 355 | 66% | $3,970 | ||
7Conservation LettersOAWiley · United States | 3.38Q1 | 6.73 0.81 up from 2018 | 270 | 100% | $3,550 | ||
8Journal of Applied EcologyWiley · United Kingdom | 3.05Q1 | 5.54 0.23 up from 2018 | 716 | 67% | $3,610 | ||
9Biological ConservationElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 2.71Q1 | 5.29 0.38 up from 2018 | 1,234 | 44% | $3,830 | ||
10Conservation BiologyWiley · United States | 2.63Q1 | 4.70 0.05 down from 2018 | 553 | 49% | $3,400 | ||
11Earth Surface DynamicsOACopernicus Publications · Germany | 2.62Q1 | 5.14 0.05 down from 2018 | 161 | 100% | $1,682 | ||
12Molecular Ecology ResourcesWiley · United Kingdom | 2.61Q1 | 6.42 0.10 down from 2018 | 376 | 52% | $5,250 | ||
13Ecological ApplicationsWiley · United States | 2.37Q1 | 4.72 0.10 down from 2018 | 594 | 48% | $3,970 | ||
14Journal of Animal EcologyWiley · United Kingdom | 2.34Q1 | 5.26 0.55 up from 2018 | 435 | 58% | $3,610 | ||
15EcologyWiley · United States | 2.27Q1 | 4.15 0.71 up from 2018 | 1,140 | 53% | $3,970 | ||
16Mammal ReviewWiley · United Kingdom | 2.27Q1 | 3.04 2.39 down from 2018 | 81 | 27% | $4,100 | ||
17Global Ecology and ConservationOAElsevier BV · Netherlands | 2.16Q1 | 3.89 0.06 up from 2018 | 320 | 100% | $2,980 | ||
18GIScience & Remote SensingOATaylor & Francis · United States | 2.16Q1 | 6.20 2.21 up from 2018 | 144 | 76% | $2,390 | ||
19Movement EcologyOABioMed Central · United Kingdom | 2.11Q1 | 4.06 0.28 down from 2018 | 77 | 100% | $2,790 | ||
20BiogeochemistrySpringer Science+Business Media · Netherlands | 2.11Q1 | 4.52 0.55 up from 2018 | 341 | 35% | $3,390 | ||
21FEMS Microbiology EcologyOAOxford University Press · Netherlands | 2.02Q1 | 4.47 0.37 down from 2018 | 675 | 56% | $3,297 | ||
22Remote Sensing in Ecology and ConservationOAWiley · United Kingdom | 1.98Q1 | 4.97 0.07 down from 2018 | 81 | 100% | $3,590 | ||
23Environmental MicrobiologyWiley · United Kingdom | 1.95Q1 | 4.66 0.17 down from 2018 | 1,072 | 41% | $4,640 | ||
24EcosystemsSpringer Science+Business Media · United States | 1.92Q1 | 3.62 0.55 down from 2018 | 398 | 33% | $4,790 | ||
25Earth Surface Processes and LandformsWiley · United Kingdom | 1.81Q1 | 3.51 0.30 down from 2018 | 612 | 46% | $5,330 | ||
26Freshwater BiologyWiley · United Kingdom | 1.80Q1 | 4.19 0.51 up from 2018 | 455 | 41% | $4,940 | ||
27Ecological EngineeringElsevier BV · Netherlands | 1.76Q1 | 3.86 0.07 down from 2018 | 1,478 | 23% | $3,910 | ||
28EcosphereOAWiley · United States | 1.75Q1 | 3.63 0.17 up from 2018 | 1,249 | 100% | $2,430 | ||
29OecologiaSpringer Science+Business Media · Germany | 1.71Q1 | 3.17 0.06 down from 2018 | 781 | 34% | $3,790 | ||
30Microbial EcologySpringer Science+Business Media · United States | 1.70Q1 | 3.85 0.13 up from 2018 | 565 | 29% | $4,590 | ||
31Biodiversity and ConservationSpringer Science+Business Media · Netherlands | 1.63Q1 | 3.08 0.10 down from 2018 | 636 | 31% | $3,990 | ||
32Annual Review of Marine ScienceAnnual Reviews · United States | 1.62Q1 | 9.91 4.12 down from 2018 | 64 | 54% | — | ||
33Coral ReefsSpringer Science+Business Media · Germany | 1.61Q1 | 3.48 0.07 down from 2018 | 352 | 25% | $4,190 | ||
34Frontiers in Ecology and EvolutionOAFrontiers Media · Switzerland | 1.61Q1 | 3.34 0.30 up from 2018 | 538 | 100% | $3,077 | ||
35Royal Society Open ScienceOARoyal Society · United Kingdom | 1.60Q1 | 3.58 0.04 down from 2018 | 2,091 | 100% | $1,471 | ||
36NeoBiotaOAPensoft Publishers · Bulgaria | 1.58Q1 | 2.87 0.20 down from 2018 | 67 | 100% | $970 | ||
37Restoration EcologyWiley · United States | 1.57Q1 | 2.97 0.04 down from 2018 | 471 | 28% | $3,300 | ||
38Ecology and EvolutionOAWiley · United Kingdom | 1.51Q1 | 2.95 0.09 up from 2018 | 2,820 | 100% | $2,570 | ||
39Biological InvasionsSpringer Science+Business Media · Netherlands | 1.47Q1 | 3.13 0.08 down from 2018 | 845 | 37% | $3,690 | ||
40Current ZoologyOAUniversity of Oxford · United Kingdom | 1.45Q1 | 2.92 0.23 up from 2018 | 371 | 100% | $0 listed | ||
41Aquatic Conservation Marine and Freshwater EcosystemsWiley · United Kingdom | 1.44Q1 | 2.90 0.05 down from 2018 | 340 | 30% | $4,730 | ||
42Journal of Agricultural and Environmental EthicsSpringer Science+Business Media · Netherlands | 1.43Q1 | 2.37 0.35 up from 2018 | 152 | 43% | $3,090 | ||
43Ecological InformaticsOAElsevier BV · Netherlands | 1.41Q1 | 3.32 1.07 up from 2018 | 265 | 32% | $2,770 | ||
44Journal for Nature ConservationElsevier BV · Germany | 1.40Q1 | 2.98 0.30 up from 2018 | 208 | 33% | $2,890 | ||
45Conservation PhysiologyOAOxford University Press · United Kingdom | 1.38Q1 | 2.55 0.52 down from 2018 | 248 | 100% | $2,734 | ||
46Tropical Conservation ScienceSAGE Publishing · United States | 1.37Q1 | 2.74 0.78 up from 2018 | 235 | 96% | $4,150 | ||
47BMC EcologyOABioMed Central · United Kingdom | 1.37Q1 | 2.54 0.32 down from 2018 | 157 | 100% | $2,290 | ||
48BMC ZoologyOABioMed Central · United Kingdom | 1.33Q1 | 2.59 0.49 down from 2018 | 35 | 100% | $1,890 | ||
49Urban EcosystemsSpringer Science+Business Media · United States | 1.32Q1 | 2.69 0.16 down from 2018 | 297 | 27% | $3,990 | ||
50Animal BiotelemetryOABioMed Central · United Kingdom | 1.32Q1 | 2.70 0.27 up from 2018 | 67 | 100% | $2,390 |
Subfields of Environmental Science, with Ecology highlighted.
- Ecology269
- Global and Planetary Change209
- Water Science and Technology97
- Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis87
- Pollution59
- Nature and Landscape Conservation57
- Environmental Engineering46
- Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law46
- Waste Management and Disposal21
- Environmental Chemistry9
- Ecological Modeling7
Journals
Citations made in 2019. Corpus-wide, 83.4% of core-journal articles and reviews published that year have at least one matched reference; the share varies by journal and field.
74 additional Ecology journals with metrics are unranked under this release’s eligibility rules: a journal needs at least 30 citable documents in 2016–2018, 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: 2019. Publication window: 2016–2018. How these summaries are calculated
- Ranked journals
- 269
- Window papers (baseline)
- 106,059 +6.4% from indicator year 2016
- Median OJR
- 0.72 -8.5% from indicator year 2016
- Rising journals (2025)
- 18
Window papers are the baseline paper population: citable papers (articles, reviews and conference papers) from 2016–2018 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 | 147 | 164 | 175 | 182 | 188 | 194 | 193 | 205 | 221 | 232 | 235 | 248 | 249 | 258 | 261 | 273 | 276 | 274 | 274 | 269 | 276 | 279 | 295 | 296 | 288 | 285 | |
| Window papers (baseline) | 34,254 | 41,682 | 44,762 | 49,088 | 47,455 | 50,630 | 54,383 | 60,221 | 66,252 | 72,124 | 77,093 | 82,207 | 86,067 | 90,052 | 94,017 | 98,126 | 99,678 | 101,371 | 102,738 | 106,059 | 108,848 | 114,234 | 123,053 | 131,302 | 140,427 | 146,313 | |
| Median OJR | 0.59 | 0.6292 | 0.638 | 0.6289 | 0.61 | 0.643 | 0.73 | 0.736 | 0.75 | 0.737 | 0.76 | 0.809 | 0.811 | 0.84 | 0.805 | 0.80 | 0.79 | 0.810 | 0.77 | 0.72 | 0.71 | 0.68 | 0.62 | 0.642 | 0.65 | 0.67 |
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.