Journal rankings · indicator year 2021
Choose a field to open its ranking, or a journal to find its row in its subfield’s list.
Subfield ranking · 2021
Molecular Biology journal rankings 2021
1,136 ranked journals · Subfield in Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Molecular Biology has 1,136 ranked journals in 2021. The median journal has an OJR of 0.92, below the world average of 1.00, down 0.02 on 2020; Q1 starts at OJR 1.42. The top three are Cell, Nature Genetics, and Nature Biotechnology.
Ranks and citation indicators: 2021. 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 2018–2020, the window the 2021 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 Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (14)
1,136 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 2020. This is OpenJournalRank’s own count, not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. | Citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) published in 2018–2020, the window the 2021 OJR is computed on. A journal needs at least 30 to be ranked. | Share of the journal’s 2018–2020 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 2012 to 2021. | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1CellCell Press · United States | 11.14Q1 | 54.97 21.06 up from 2020 | 1,786 | 100% | $11,400 | ||
2Nature GeneticsNature Portfolio · United States | 9.11Q1 | 34.74 0.27 up from 2020 | 602 | 71% | $12,690 | ||
3Nature BiotechnologyNature Portfolio · United States | 8.19Q1 | 35.94 9.95 up from 2020 | 857 | 41% | $12,690 | ||
4International Journal of Oral ScienceOASpringer Nature · China | 8.09Q1 | 37.38 29.66 up from 2020 | 104 | 100% | $3,890 | ||
5Molecular CancerOABioMed Central · United Kingdom | 7.77Q1 | 42.65 12.06 up from 2020 | 504 | 100% | $5,090 | ||
6NatureNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 7.67Q1 | 26.24 8.90 up from 2020 | 8,686 | 34% | $12,690 | ||
7Pharmacological ReviewsAmerican Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics · United States | 7.20Q1 | 23.31 2.45 down from 2020 | 78 | 78% | $4,500 | ||
8Nature Reviews Molecular Cell BiologyNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 6.18Q1 | 47.71 7.72 up from 2020 | 320 | 31% | — | ||
9Cell MetabolismCell Press · United States | 6.18Q1 | 23.45 2.46 up from 2020 | 689 | 100% | $10,400 | ||
10Nature MicrobiologyNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 5.95Q1 | 27.26 12.60 up from 2020 | 670 | 64% | $12,690 | ||
11MicrobiomeOABioMed Central · United Kingdom | 5.76Q1 | 19.72 1.46 up from 2020 | 531 | 100% | $4,990 | ||
12Nature Cell BiologyNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 5.62Q1 | 18.46 3.66 down from 2020 | 503 | 55% | $12,690 | ||
13Military Medical ResearchOABioMed Central · China | 5.14Q1 | 26.86 23.18 up from 2020 | 140 | 100% | $0 listed | ||
14Nature CommunicationsOANature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 5.04Q1 | 19.93 2.77 up from 2020 | 16,685 | 100% | $6,990 | ||
15Cell Host & MicrobeCell Press · United States | 4.87Q1 | 24.13 8.56 up from 2020 | 620 | 99% | $10,400 | ||
16Journal of Extracellular VesiclesOATaylor & Francis · United States | 4.83Q1 | 16.18 8.20 down from 2020 | 233 | 100% | $4,410 | ||
17Science AdvancesOAAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science · United States | 4.82Q1 | 16.59 0.73 up from 2020 | 4,289 | 100% | $4,500 | ||
18Nature MethodsNature Portfolio · United States | 4.80Q1 | 22.44 9.34 up from 2020 | 1,055 | 52% | $12,690 | ||
19Cell ResearchSpringer Nature · United Kingdom | 4.63Q1 | 24.12 11.50 up from 2020 | 434 | 100% | $5,190 | ||
20Nature Biomedical EngineeringNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 4.60Q1 | 18.16 2.33 up from 2020 | 444 | 62% | $12,690 | ||
21Bone ResearchOASpringer Nature · China | 4.57Q1 | 14.54 1.60 down from 2020 | 107 | 100% | $3,405 | ||
22Current Protocols in BioinformaticsWiley · United States | 4.48Q1 | 29.85 17.27 up from 2020 | 58 | — | $5,050 | ||
23Systematic BiologyOxford University Press · United States | 4.43Q1 | 6.55 7.27 down from 2020 | 272 | 74% | $2,166 | ||
24Nature ProtocolsNature Portfolio · United States | 4.41Q1 | 18.47 3.38 up from 2020 | 482 | 58% | — | ||
25Genome biologyOABioMed Central · United Kingdom | 4.40Q1 | 19.60 4.42 up from 2020 | 796 | 100% | $5,490 | ||
26Circulation ResearchLippincott Williams & Wilkins · United States | 4.33Q1 | 16.89 4.56 up from 2020 | 833 | 47% | — | ||
27Drug Resistance UpdatesElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 4.30Q1 | 24.78 7.43 up from 2020 | 61 | 44% | $5,410 | ||
28FEMS Microbiology ReviewsOAOxford University Press · Netherlands | 4.25Q1 | 12.34 5.51 down from 2020 | 145 | 68% | $3,297 | ||
29npj Regenerative MedicineOANature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 4.24Q1 | 17.52 5.52 up from 2020 | 70 | 100% | $4,190 | ||
30ScienceAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science · United States | 4.23Q1 | 15.33 5.21 up from 2020 | 12,027 | 20% | — | ||
31Molecular Biology and EvolutionOAOxford University Press · United States | 4.22Q1 | 8.00 5.79 down from 2020 | 881 | 100% | $3,418 | ||
32Nature reviews. CancerNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 4.22Q1 | 32.65 8.58 up from 2020 | 337 | 28% | — | ||
33Cell stem cellElsevier BV · United States | 4.19Q1 | 16.80 1.47 up from 2020 | 627 | 99% | $10,400 | ||
34Signal Transduction and Targeted TherapyOASpringer Nature · United Kingdom | 4.16Q1 | 23.10 6.18 up from 2020 | 391 | 100% | $3,790 | ||
35Cell DiscoveryOASpringer Nature · United Kingdom | 4.13Q1 | 24.38 16.65 up from 2020 | 220 | 100% | $3,590 | ||
36Nature Reviews MicrobiologyNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 4.12Q1 | 25.51 1.79 up from 2020 | 532 | 26% | — | ||
37Biotechnology AdvancesElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 4.10Q1 | 16.39 1.00 up from 2020 | 380 | 40% | $5,460 | ||
38ACS Central ScienceOAAmerican Chemical Society · United States | 4.07Q1 | 17.78 3.01 up from 2020 | 580 | 100% | $0 listed | ||
39Nature MetabolismNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 3.96Q1 | 14.33 4.08 up from 2020 | 293 | 61% | $12,690 | ||
40Nature Reviews Drug DiscoveryNature Portfolio · United States | 3.96Q1 | 22.47 5.31 up from 2020 | 557 | 14% | — | ||
41Nucleic Acids ResearchOAOxford University Press · United Kingdom | 3.96Q1 | 14.58 2.18 down from 2020 | 3,840 | 100% | $3,992 | ||
42Nature Reviews GeneticsNature Portfolio · United Kingdom | 3.82Q1 | 29.79 3.30 up from 2020 | 325 | 31% | — | ||
43Journal of Clinical InvestigationOAAmerican Society for Clinical Investigation · United States | 3.80Q1 | 15.52 3.19 up from 2020 | 1,683 | 100% | $5,200 | ||
44Experimental & Molecular MedicineOASpringer Nature · South Korea | 3.72Q1 | 15.43 4.56 up from 2020 | 540 | 100% | $4,490 | ||
45Science Translational MedicineAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science · United States | 3.70Q1 | 14.03 1.67 up from 2020 | 1,279 | 63% | — | ||
46Physiological ReviewsAmerican Physiological Society · United States | 3.69Q1 | 38.66 1.46 up from 2020 | 152 | 80% | — | ||
47Progress in Lipid ResearchElsevier BV · United Kingdom | 3.69Q1 | 12.01 2.62 down from 2020 | 87 | 56% | $5,530 | ||
48Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesNational Academy of Sciences · United States | 3.62Q1 | 12.83 1.40 up from 2020 | 11,716 | 100% | — | ||
49TrAC Trends in Analytical ChemistryElsevier BV · Netherlands | 3.61Q1 | 13.97 0.22 up from 2020 | 940 | 28% | $5,150 | ||
50Molecular CellElsevier BV · United States | 3.57Q1 | 16.18 0.79 up from 2020 | 1,293 | 100% | $10,400 |
Subfields of Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology, with Molecular Biology highlighted.
- Molecular Biology1,136
- Genetics120
- Cancer Research27
- Cell Biology27
- Molecular Medicine9
- Biophysics8
- Clinical Biochemistry4
- Biochemistry2
- Endocrinology2
- Structural Biology2
- Developmental Biology1
- Physiology1
- Aging0
- Biotechnology0
Journals
Citations made in 2021. Corpus-wide, 87.7% of core-journal articles and reviews published that year have at least one matched reference; the share varies by journal and field.
366 additional Molecular Biology journals with metrics are unranked under this release’s eligibility rules: a journal needs at least 30 citable documents in 2018–2020, 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: 2021. Publication window: 2018–2020. How these summaries are calculated
- Ranked journals
- 1,136
- Window papers (baseline)
- 388,390 +4.4% from indicator year 2018
- Median OJR
- 0.917 -2.4% from indicator year 2018
- Rising journals (2025)
- 129
Window papers are the baseline paper population: citable papers (articles, reviews and conference papers) from 2018–2020 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 | 519 | 546 | 586 | 626 | 650 | 687 | 707 | 752 | 778 | 801 | 844 | 901 | 955 | 996 | 1,034 | 1,073 | 1,109 | 1,133 | 1,155 | 1,157 | 1,141 | 1,136 | 1,158 | 1,167 | 1,149 | 1,152 | |
| Window papers (baseline) | 181,358 | 194,151 | 205,259 | 217,711 | 227,129 | 242,923 | 257,591 | 273,038 | 286,182 | 303,541 | 319,771 | 333,582 | 344,870 | 354,245 | 365,796 | 374,398 | 378,858 | 377,367 | 371,908 | 369,033 | 372,681 | 388,390 | 409,363 | 424,318 | 425,615 | 430,199 | |
| Median OJR | 0.66 | 0.65 | 0.70 | 0.79 | 0.82 | 0.872 | 0.923 | 0.929 | 0.95 | 0.97 | 1.010 | 1.051 | 1.049 | 1.014 | 1.001 | 0.99 | 0.98 | 0.944 | 0.940 | 0.933 | 0.937 | 0.917 | 0.9097 | 0.870 | 0.89 | 0.9095 |
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.