High Impact Factors for MPG Open Access Journals

Living Reviews physics journals top their categories

The open access physics journal Living Reviews in Relativity, published by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam, again leads the category Physics, Particles & Fields in the 2011 Journal Citation Reports released by Thomson Reuters on June 29, 2012. The unique review journal received an impact factor of 17.462, thus improving last year’s performance and rising to #54 in JCR’s complete list of about 8000 indexed journals.

Living Reviews in Solar Physics, published by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, has just received its very first impact factor (12.500).  The journal thus ranks among the top three in the category Astronomy & Astrophysics, after it was included in the Science Citation Index (SCI) only in 2011. With an impressive #103 in the complete list, the ‘newcomer’ barely missed JCR’s Top 100.

Living Reviews in Solar Physics was the second publication in the family of review journals initiated by Max Planck director Bernard Schutz. The concept of ‘living’ articles takes 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 expert scientists.

The journals have become one of the first places researchers look for information about work in their fields.  The 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 European Community Studies Association Austria, 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 [445 KB]

Press Release as PDF [432 KB]

We are happy to welcome our new editor Hugh Hudson from the University of California, Berkeley, to the editorial board of Living Reviews in Solar Physics!

Dr. Hugh Hudson is a senior research scientist at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory with extensive experience in solar X-ray observations and solar irradiance variability in particular. In addition to his ongoing research in CMEs, he is involved with RHESSI data analysis, keeping a special eye on the question of coronal and solar-wind field connectivity as characterized by high-energy particles.

MPG Open Access Journal ranks 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, leads the category Physics, Particles & Fields in the 2010 Journal Citation Reports released by Thomson Reuters on June 29, 2011. The unique review journal received an impact factor of 12.625, thus improving last year’s performance and rising to #95 in JCR’s complete list of almost 8000 indexed journals.

In March 2011, Living Reviews in Relativity has published its 100th review article in the field of relativity and gravitational physics. The journal currently maintains 72 articles on various topics, which are regularly updated by their authors to incorporate the latest developments and research findings.

Living Reviews‘ successful concept was adopted by other publications in other fields ranging from astronomy to political science. To date, 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 University of Zurich.

The second journal of the family, Living Reviews in Solar Physics, was just included in Thomson Reuters‘ JCR and SCI in April 2011, therefore missing the deadline for the 2010 Journal Citation Reports by only a few days. However, it would have had received an impressive first impact factor of about 11, ranking 4th in the category Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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

Living Reviews in Solar Physics has been accepted for coverage in Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index (SCI), beginning with volume 5 (2008). The journal will be indexed and abstracted in SCI, JCR and Current Contents. Living Reviews in Solar Physics, an open access review journal published by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, is thus eligible for the Journal Impact Factor, which is seen to be a widely accepted indicator of a journal’s significance within its field.

P.S.: http://science.thomsonreuters.com/forum/2011/201106/journallist/

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The journal Living Reviews in Solar Physics happily celebrates its 5th anniversary in 2009! We would like to thank our readers and authors for their interest and support.

On 14 December 2009, we have published an update of the review “Magnetic Fields in the Solar Convection Zone” by Yuhong Fan.

This publication perfectly demonstrates the concept of our ‘living’ reviews: The original article of 2004 was revised in February 2007 by adding a few recent studies and results. Now, a major revision updates this review by adding 55 references, new figures and movies, and substantially rewritten sections.

The Living Reviews Reference Database currently contains metadata from more than 5,400 records cited in our articles.

Thanks to crossref’s excellent OpenURL interface, we’ve been able to find quite a few DOIs for records in our reference databases which previously had none.

More precisely:

• 6580 new DOIs for the reference database of the two physics journals,
• 111 for Living Reviews in European Governance and
• 77 for Living Reviews in Landscape Research.

Using the Google Books API we also managed to add links to book previews for many of our reference records.

So if you know the journals but haven’t checked out the reference databases yet: they just got a little more useful.

Prof. Dr. Eckart Marsch, head of the Solar Plasma group at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany — and editorial board member of Living Reviews in Solar Physics — has been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The honor was presented at the AGU Joint Assembly in Toronto on May 26, 2009.

EBSCO’s Academic Search Complete database now indexes the full texts of Living Reviews in Relativity and Living Reviews in Solar Physics.

Thereby, these journals are also visible to ‘traditional’ literature research, as this service is available in many academic libraries.

In addition to web search engines, article metadata are also made available through databases and harvesters such as ADS, arXiv, OAIster, Scientific Commons, and others.