Journal rankings · indicator year 2019
Choose a field to open its ranking, or a journal to find its row in its subfield’s list.
Domain ranking · 2019
Life Sciences journal rankings 2019
3,037 ranked journals · Domain
Life Sciences has 3,037 ranked journals in 2019. The median journal has an OJR of 0.81, below the world average of 1.00, unchanged on 2018; Q1 starts at OJR 1.33. The top three are Cell, Nature Genetics, and Pharmacological Reviews.
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.
Fields in Life Sciences (5)
Up to All journals3,037 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 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1CellCell Press · United States | 9.89Q1 | 32.06 3.59 up from 2018 | 1,876 | 99% | $11,400 | ||
2Nature GeneticsNature Portfolio · United States | 8.71Q1 | 24.41 2.18 up from 2018 | 778 | 75% | $12,690 | ||
3Pharmacological ReviewsAmerican Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics · United States | 8.21Q1 | 22.69 2.11 up from 2018 | 68 | 69% | $4,500 | ||
4The Journal of Peasant StudiesTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 7.36Q1 | 6.21 1.65 up from 2018 | 260 | 28% | — | ||
5NatureNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 6.91Q1 | 15.42 0.73 up from 2018 | 8,960 | 49% | $12,690 | ||
6Nature NeuroscienceNature Portfolio · United States | 6.64Q1 | 19.11 0.24 up from 2018 | 693 | 69% | $12,690 | ||
7Molecular Biology and EvolutionOAOxford University Press · United States | 6.29Q1 | 10.34 3.31 down from 2018 | 901 | 83% | $3,418 | ||
8Cell MetabolismCell Press · United States | 6.19Q1 | 17.17 0.51 down from 2018 | 734 | 100% | $10,400 | ||
9FEMS Microbiology ReviewsOAOxford University Press · Netherlands | 6.00Q1 | 16.21 3.82 up from 2018 | 146 | 84% | $3,297 | ||
10Science AdvancesOAAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science · United States | 5.92Q1 | 15.80 0.77 up from 2018 | 2,171 | 100% | $4,500 | ||
11Journal of Basic and Clinical PharmacyMedknow · India | 5.85Q1 | 1.00 10.50 down from 2018 | 31 | 0% | — | ||
12Nature Human BehaviourNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 5.71Q1 | 8.20 0.57 up from 2018 | 447 | 40% | $12,690 | ||
13ImmunityCell Press · United States | 5.59Q1 | 16.69 0.06 down from 2018 | 776 | 99% | $10,400 | ||
14Ecology LettersWiley · United Kingdom | 5.58Q1 | 10.09 0.21 up from 2018 | 492 | 50% | $5,300 | ||
15Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food SafetyWiley · United States | 5.57Q1 | 12.01 2.07 up from 2018 | 209 | 17% | $5,000 | ||
16MicrobiomeOABioMed Central · United Kingdom | 5.54Q1 | 15.08 1.69 up from 2018 | 442 | 100% | $4,990 | ||
17Trends in Food Science & TechnologyElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 5.49Q1 | 12.69 3.20 up from 2018 | 664 | 24% | $5,440 | ||
18Nature Ecology & EvolutionNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 5.27Q1 | 10.64 0.83 up from 2018 | 692 | 58% | $12,690 | ||
19Nature BiotechnologyNature Portfolio · United States | 5.17Q1 | 15.12 3.46 up from 2018 | 969 | 39% | $12,690 | ||
20Nature Cell BiologyNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 5.00Q1 | 15.62 1.87 up from 2018 | 530 | 61% | $12,690 | ||
21Nature MicrobiologyNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 4.98Q1 | 13.02 0.72 up from 2018 | 687 | 61% | $12,690 | ||
22Progress in Lipid ResearchElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 4.94Q1 | 15.77 7.11 up from 2018 | 111 | 39% | $5,530 | ||
23Fungal DiversitySpringer Science+Business Media · Netherlands | 4.93Q1 | 15.14 0.72 down from 2018 | 58 | 53% | $3,490 | ||
24Bone ResearchOASpringer Nature · China | 4.93Q1 | 14.50 2.41 up from 2018 | 93 | 100% | $3,405 | ||
25Nature CommunicationsOANature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 4.93Q1 | 14.59 0.75 up from 2018 | 13,113 | 100% | $6,990 | ||
26Cell Host & MicrobeCell Press · United States | 4.81Q1 | 11.87 0.01 down from 2018 | 615 | 99% | $10,400 | ||
27Signal Transduction and Targeted TherapyOASpringer Nature · United Kingdom | 4.73Q1 | 16.41 8.42 up from 2018 | 90 | 100% | $3,790 | ||
28Journal of Pineal ResearchWiley · Denmark | 4.71Q1 | 14.70 1.30 down from 2018 | 221 | 33% | $5,000 | ||
29Current Directions in Psychological ScienceSAGE Publishing · United Kingdom | 4.67Q1 | 8.24 1.48 up from 2018 | 240 | 37% | $3,900 | ||
30Psychological ReviewAmerican Psychological Association · United States | 4.67Q1 | 9.07 0.86 up from 2018 | 111 | 50% | — | ||
31Inflammatory Intestinal DiseasesOAKarger Publishers · Switzerland | 4.66Q1 | 2.04 11.02 down from 2018 | 71 | 100% | $990 | ||
32Drug Resistance UpdatesElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 4.58Q1 | 14.75 1.06 up from 2018 | 61 | 23% | $5,410 | ||
33Genome biologyOABioMed Central · United Kingdom | 4.57Q1 | 12.03 2.44 down from 2018 | 690 | 100% | $5,490 | ||
34Journal of Rural StudiesElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 4.44Q1 | 4.44 0.11 up from 2018 | 550 | 45% | $4,090 | ||
35Nature ProtocolsNature Portfolio · United States | 4.43Q1 | 12.24 0.98 down from 2018 | 465 | 59% | — | ||
36Journal of Extracellular VesiclesOATaylor & Francis · United States | 4.43Q1 | 17.60 5.45 up from 2018 | 119 | 100% | $4,410 | ||
37Cell stem cellElsevier BV · United States | 4.38Q1 | 12.86 0.52 down from 2018 | 636 | 99% | $10,400 | ||
38Psychological ScienceSAGE Publishing · United States | 4.35Q1 | 7.17 1.02 up from 2018 | 566 | 38% | $3,900 | ||
39Biotechnology AdvancesElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 4.35Q1 | 11.51 0.18 up from 2018 | 346 | 32% | $5,460 | ||
40Current Protocols in BioinformaticsWiley · United States | 4.35Q1 | 3.45 15.92 down from 2018 | 64 | 58% | $5,050 | ||
41Nature MethodsNature Portfolio · United States | 4.34Q1 | 13.26 0.87 up from 2018 | 1,181 | 43% | $12,690 | ||
42ACS Central ScienceOAAmerican Chemical Society · United States | 4.31Q1 | 13.86 0.54 up from 2018 | 445 | 100% | $0 listed | ||
43Molecular CancerOABioMed Central · United Kingdom | 4.25Q1 | 17.00 4.85 up from 2018 | 432 | 100% | $5,090 | ||
44NeuronCell Press · United States | 4.23Q1 | 12.77 0.48 up from 2018 | 1,610 | 100% | $10,400 | ||
45Systematic BiologyOxford University Press · United States | 4.17Q1 | 9.51 2.48 up from 2018 | 299 | 59% | $2,166 | ||
46Studies in MycologyElsevier BV · Netherlands | 4.13Q1 | 10.87 2.03 up from 2018 | 63 | 100% | $1,430 | ||
47Journal of Clinical InvestigationOAAmerican Society for Clinical Investigation · United States | 4.11Q1 | 11.09 0.64 down from 2018 | 1,365 | 100% | $5,200 | ||
48Circulation ResearchLippincott Williams & Wilkins · United States | 4.11Q1 | 11.30 0.59 down from 2018 | 944 | 32% | — | ||
49Nature Biomedical EngineeringNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 4.07Q1 | 11.72 1.48 up from 2018 | 302 | 46% | $12,690 | ||
50Science Translational MedicineAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science · United States | 4.06Q1 | 11.13 0.65 up from 2018 | 1,237 | 44% | — |
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.
897 additional Life Sciences 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
- 3,037
- Window papers (baseline)
- 1,677,661 +1.9% from indicator year 2016
- Median OJR
- 0.806 -1.4% from indicator year 2016
- Rising journals (2025)
- 273
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 | 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.