High Impact Factor for MPG Open Access Journal

Living Reviews in Relativity second best in its category

The open access physics journal Living Reviews in Relativity, published by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam, has received its first impact factor of 10.600 in the 2009 Journal Citation Reports released by Thomson Reuters on June 17, 2010. The unique review journal ranks second in the category Physics, Particles & Fields.

Living Reviews were initiated by Max Planck director Bernard Schutz in 1998. The concept of ‘living’ articles is taking advantage of web-based electronic publishing, allowing authors to frequently incorporate the latest developments and research findings by updating their reviews. To ensure high-quality scientific content, all articles are subject to peer review and solicited by an international editorial board from experts in their fields.

Today, Living Reviews in Relativity maintains 68 topical reviews, which have been cited more than 4,800 times by other authors. The journal has become one of the first places scientists look for information about work in the fields of gravitational physics.  Its successful concept was adopted by other publications in various fields ranging from astronomy to political science. Currently, five Living Reviews journals are published by partners from the Max Planck Society, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and ECSA, the Leibniz Association, and the ETH  and the University of Zurich.

The Journal Impact Factor is one of the most widely used tools for assessing scientific journals. It allows users to objectively evaluate a journal’s performance and its influence on research globally. The impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations to those papers that were published during the two preceding years.

Pressemitteilung als PDF [157 KB]

Press Release as PDF [131 KB]

Thomson Reuters has selected Living Reviews in Relativity for coverage in their information services. The journal is now indexed and abstracted in SCI, JCR and Current Contents. Thus, it will be listed with a Journal Impact Factor in the 2009 JCR edition, to be released in June 2010.

With today’s publication, the Living Reviews reference database contains more than 15,000 citations of resources in the field of relativity.

These references are carefully selected by our authors and collected from all articles published in Living Reviews in Relativity.

Cross-linked from the database to their point of reference in each article, and linked to available resources online, they provide a valuable tool for scientists.

A web interface to the database includes several search strategies. Various bibliographic export formats allow easy transfer to researchers’ own reference collections.

SPIRES-HEP, run by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), has included 15 Living Reviews in Relativity articles in its Guide to Review Literature in High-Energy Physics. The guide indexes by topic “review papers that have a significant number of citations in the SPIRES-HEP database”.

Moreover, four reviews published in LRR have made it to The 50 most highly cited papers of All Time (2006 edition) in the gr-qc archive.

Another nice confirmation of the journal’s success!