Journal rankings · indicator year 2020
Choose a field to open its ranking, or a journal to find its row in its subfield’s list.
Domain ranking · 2020
Physical Sciences journal rankings 2020
6,592 ranked journals · Domain
Physical Sciences has 6,592 ranked journals in 2020. The median journal has an OJR of 0.68, below the world average of 1.00, unchanged on 2019; Q1 starts at OJR 1.23. The top three are Reviews of Modern Physics, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, and Progress in Energy and Combustion Science.
Ranks and citation indicators: 2020. 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 2017–2019, the window the 2020 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 Physical Sciences (10)
Up to All journals6,592 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 2019. This is OpenJournalRank’s own count, not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. | Citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) published in 2017–2019, the window the 2020 OJR is computed on. A journal needs at least 30 to be ranked. | Share of the journal’s 2017–2019 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 2011 to 2020. | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1Reviews of Modern PhysicsAmerican Physical Society · United States | 23.45Q1 | 60.09 10.09 up from 2019 | 121 | 76% | — | ||
2IEEE Communications Surveys & TutorialsInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers · United States | 13.75Q1 | 35.75 9.62 up from 2019 | 372 | 60% | $2,645 | ||
3Progress in Energy and Combustion ScienceElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 12.29Q1 | 35.19 5.79 up from 2019 | 106 | 27% | $6,990 | ||
4Progress in Materials ScienceElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 11.63Q1 | 35.47 3.64 up from 2019 | 181 | 32% | $6,040 | ||
5Physics ReportsElsevier BV · Netherlands | 11.30Q1 | 25.24 4.45 down from 2019 | 152 | 47% | $6,240 | ||
6Journal of Statistical SoftwareOAFoundation for Open Access Statistics · United States | 10.99Q1 | 8.29 11.23 down from 2019 | 239 | 100% | — | ||
7Reviews of GeophysicsWiley · United States | 10.85Q1 | 25.00 1.54 up from 2019 | 91 | 78% | $3,880 | ||
8Transactions of the Association for Computational LinguisticsOAAssociation for Computational Linguistics | 10.13Q1 | 10.57 12.69 down from 2019 | 130 | 100% | — | ||
9Communications of the ACMAssociation for Computing Machinery · United States | 9.63Q1 | 3.64 19.72 down from 2019 | 835 | 24% | — | ||
10ACM SIGKDD Explorations NewsletterAssociation for Computing Machinery · United States | 9.59Q1 | 5.67 13.06 down from 2019 | 32 | 25% | — | ||
11Progress in Aerospace SciencesElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 9.34Q1 | 11.82 2.86 up from 2019 | 124 | 35% | $5,860 | ||
12Materials Science and Engineering R ReportsElsevier BV · Netherlands | 8.97Q1 | 34.61 4.14 up from 2019 | 47 | 56% | $6,150 | ||
13Nature EnergyNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 8.48Q1 | 31.05 5.49 up from 2019 | 634 | 44% | $12,690 | ||
14Energy & Environmental ScienceRoyal Society of Chemistry · United Kingdom | 8.21Q1 | 37.68 9.71 up from 2019 | 939 | 32% | — | ||
15ACM Computing SurveysAssociation for Computing Machinery · United States | 8.20Q1 | 17.12 1.36 up from 2019 | 370 | 44% | — | ||
16Science RoboticsAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science · United States | 8.06Q1 | 22.35 5.05 up from 2019 | 215 | 34% | — | ||
17Progress in Polymer ScienceElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 8.05Q1 | 30.65 9.05 up from 2019 | 180 | 37% | $6,500 | ||
18IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine IntelligenceIEEE Computer Society · United States | 7.36Q1 | 16.51 0.83 up from 2019 | 953 | 48% | $2,645 | ||
19Journal of Industrial Information IntegrationElsevier BV · Netherlands | 7.31Q1 | 13.13 2.64 down from 2019 | 86 | 18% | $3,810 | ||
20Nature MaterialsNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 7.20Q1 | 25.78 4.38 up from 2019 | 754 | 53% | $12,690 | ||
21Reports on Progress in PhysicsIOP Publishing · United Kingdom | 7.13Q1 | 17.99 0.63 down from 2019 | 198 | 85% | $4,680 | ||
22Information FusionElsevier BV · Netherlands | 6.88Q1 | 15.51 1.34 up from 2019 | 351 | 34% | $4,740 | ||
23JouleElsevier BV · United States | 6.85Q1 | 28.60 6.67 up from 2019 | 631 | 100% | $9,350 | ||
24Computer Science ReviewElsevier BV · Netherlands | 6.62Q1 | 12.13 1.25 down from 2019 | 64 | 29% | $4,190 | ||
25Electrochemical Energy ReviewsSpringer Science+Business Media · Singapore | 6.58Q1 | 29.88 3.34 up from 2019 | 49 | 43% | $3,390 | ||
26Nature NanotechnologyNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 6.56Q1 | 23.52 4.16 up from 2019 | 801 | 56% | $12,690 | ||
27Nature PhotonicsNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 6.56Q1 | 20.59 4.39 up from 2019 | 709 | 49% | $12,690 | ||
28Advanced MaterialsGermany | 6.38Q1 | 25.53 1.44 up from 2019 | 5,049 | 40% | $6,070 | ||
29Nature Climate ChangeNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 6.37Q1 | 15.88 2.18 up from 2019 | 837 | 34% | $12,690 | ||
30Applied Physics ReviewsAmerican Institute of Physics · United States | 6.27Q1 | 21.00 1.70 up from 2019 | 161 | 59% | — | ||
31Progress in Particle and Nuclear PhysicsElsevier BV · Netherlands | 6.22Q1 | 15.99 1.38 up from 2019 | 97 | 65% | $4,780 | ||
32Accounts of Chemical ResearchAmerican Chemical Society · United States | 6.17Q1 | 24.52 2.84 up from 2019 | 989 | 33% | $4,500 | ||
33IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary ComputationInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers · United States | 6.11Q1 | 11.33 1.42 up from 2019 | 269 | 57% | $2,645 | ||
34Nature CatalysisNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 6.04Q1 | 25.98 5.36 up from 2019 | 378 | 31% | $12,690 | ||
35Analytic Methods in Accident ResearchElsevier BV · Netherlands | 5.99Q1 | 12.40 1.32 up from 2019 | 55 | 34% | $5,310 | ||
36Nature Machine IntelligenceNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 5.89Q1 | 13.20 3.95 up from 2019 | 120 | 55% | $12,690 | ||
37InfoMatOAWiley · China | 5.89Q1 | 21.98no 2019 value | 66 | 100% | $3,000 | — | |
38Journal of New Approaches in Educational ResearchOAUniversity of Alicante · Spain | 5.82Q1 | 7.02 3.05 up from 2019 | 59 | 100% | $2,590 | ||
39Nature GeoscienceNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 5.73Q1 | 15.33 4.07 up from 2019 | 640 | 52% | $12,690 | ||
40Nature SustainabilityNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 5.71Q1 | 12.75 3.39 up from 2019 | 435 | 47% | $12,690 | ||
41GPS SolutionsSpringer Science+Business Media · United States | 5.62Q1 | 4.92 0.98 up from 2019 | 350 | 27% | $2,790 | ||
42Journal of CybersecurityOAOxford University Press · United Kingdom | 5.61Q1 | 7.84 4.36 up from 2019 | 41 | 100% | $2,094 | ||
43Journal Of Big DataOASpringer Science+Business Media · Germany | 5.55Q1 | 12.94 7.54 up from 2019 | 214 | 100% | $2,290 | ||
44LandslidesSpringer Science+Business Media · Germany | 5.49Q1 | 6.18 0.81 up from 2019 | 514 | 26% | $4,590 | ||
45Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Data Mining and Knowledge DiscoveryWiley · United States | 5.49Q1 | 11.53 3.24 up from 2019 | 132 | 32% | $4,480 | ||
46Advanced Energy MaterialsWiley · Germany | 5.42Q1 | 22.69no change | 2,355 | 35% | $5,790 | ||
47Global Food SecurityElsevier BV · Netherlands | 5.39Q1 | 10.07 0.94 up from 2019 | 186 | 70% | $5,240 | ||
48Earth system science dataOACopernicus Publications · Germany | 5.25Q1 | 14.99 2.56 up from 2019 | 293 | 100% | $1,509 | ||
49International Journal of Web and Grid ServicesInderscience Publishers · United Kingdom | 5.24Q1 | 16.45 9.84 up from 2019 | 105 | 10% | — | ||
50Proceedings of the IEEEInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers · United States | 5.23Q1 | 11.13 1.51 up from 2019 | 576 | 59% | $2,645 |
Citations made in 2020. Corpus-wide, 86.1% of core-journal articles and reviews published that year have at least one matched reference; the share varies by journal and field.
1,970 additional Physical Sciences journals with metrics are unranked under this release’s eligibility rules: a journal needs at least 30 citable documents in 2017–2019, 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: 2020. Publication window: 2017–2019. How these summaries are calculated
- Ranked journals
- 6,592
- Window papers (baseline)
- 5,450,875 -13.5% from indicator year 2017
- Median OJR
- 0.679 -6.3% from indicator year 2017
- Rising journals (2025)
- 544
Window papers are the baseline paper population: citable papers (articles, reviews and conference papers) from 2017–2019 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 | 2,978 | 3,130 | 3,308 | 3,456 | 3,568 | 3,676 | 3,772 | 3,984 | 4,244 | 4,490 | 4,657 | 4,878 | 5,152 | 5,440 | 5,715 | 5,957 | 6,138 | 6,264 | 6,379 | 6,515 | 6,592 | 6,653 | 6,729 | 6,756 | 6,753 | 6,689 | |
| Window papers (baseline) | 2,394,543 | 2,616,266 | 2,843,810 | 3,093,298 | 3,313,683 | 3,580,201 | 3,872,505 | 4,185,648 | 4,493,645 | 4,800,486 | 5,075,806 | 5,354,164 | 5,648,473 | 5,894,389 | 6,132,497 | 6,314,481 | 6,413,369 | 6,301,559 | 5,933,082 | 5,573,353 | 5,450,875 | 5,628,343 | 5,801,009 | 5,736,495 | 5,650,353 | 5,795,472 | |
| Median OJR | 0.683 | 0.698 | 0.74 | 0.784 | 0.79 | 0.805 | 0.83 | 0.839 | 0.85 | 0.8694 | 0.8692 | 0.86 | 0.840 | 0.82 | 0.812 | 0.783 | 0.76 | 0.72 | 0.695 | 0.681 | 0.679 | 0.676 | 0.666 | 0.6623 | 0.6622 | 0.667 |
| Measure | Category statistic | Eligible population |
|---|---|---|
| Journal self-citation share | Median: 4.4% | 5,226 journals |
| Retracted papers per 1,000 | Pooled rate: 2.726 per 1,000 | 4,677 journals |
| Output growth | Median: +1.1% | 6,002 journals |
| Open access share | Median: 61.9% | 6,689 journals |
| Listed APC (USD) | Median including $0 listed prices: $3,090 | 3,753 ranked journals with a known listed price, including $0 listed prices |
| International collaboration share | Median: 25.2% | 6,406 journals |
| Review share | Median: 0.0% | 6,689 journals |
| Articles-only OJR | Median: 0.67 | 6,602 journals |
| Uncited share | Median: 33.6% | 6,689 journals |
| Citation concentration | Median: 45.5% | 6,676 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.