Top journals in immunology

	Journal	Papers	Citations	Citations per paper
1	Annual Review of Immunology	269	65,458	243.34
2	Science	289	55,801	193.08
3	Nature	298	56,570	189.83
4	Nature Immunology	1,183	119,063	100.64
5	Nature Reviews Immunology	483	39,555	81.89
6	Immunity	1,487	120,749	81.20
7	Trends in Immunology	930	42,055	45.22
8	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA	1,489	66,470	44.64
9	Current Opinions in Immunology	979	41,965	42.87
10	Immunological Reviews	1,178	43,698	37.10
11	Seminars in Immunology	431	12,857	29.83
12	Journal of Immunology	18,607	543,082	29.19
13	AIDS	3,796	89,720	23.64
14	Journal of Infectious Diseases	5,791	133,961	23.13
15	European Journal of Immunology	3,850	85,058	22.09
16	Infection and Immunity	9,213	185,247	20.11
17	Journal of Leukocyte Biology	2,859	52,822	18.48
18	International Immunology	1,740	29,545	16.98
19	Clinical & Experimental Allergy	2,430	39,421	16.22
20	JAIDS: Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes	2,535	40,652	16.04

The data above were extracted from Thomson Reuters’ Essential Science Indicators database. This database, currently covering the period January 1999 to June 2009, surveys only journal articles (original research reports and review articles) indexed by Thomson Reuters. Articles are assigned to a category based on the journals in which they were published and the journal-to-category field-definition scheme used by Thomson Reuters. Both articles tabulated and citation counts are for the period indicated.

Here, our ranking of journals in immunology is by citations per paper to reveal weighted impact. Essential Science Indicators lists journals ranked in the top 50 per cent for a field over a given period, based on total citations. In immunology, 61 journals are listed, meaning 122 journals in the field were surveyed. Of these, 41 received 10,000 or more citations during the period.

This top 20 should be recognised as distinct from the Thomson Reuters impact-factor rankings, which are presented in the Journal Citation Reports issued each year. The impact factor is calculated as citations in year three to a journal’s contents in years one and two, divided by the number of so-called “citable” items (regular articles and reviews) in years one and two. Thus, the ranking reveals longer-term impact (citations per paper). The data for the multidisciplinary journals listed – Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA – take into account only those articles classified by Thomson Reuters as immunology papers.

For more information, see http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/products/esi