Top journals in agricultural sciences

	Journal	Papers	Citations	Citations per paper
1	Journal of Nutrition	4,942	90,599	18.33
2	Proceedings of the Nutrition Society	733	12,061	16.45
3	Agricultural and Forest Meteorology	1,2	19,185	15.64
4	International Journal of Food Microbiology	2,771	37,799	13.64
5	Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry	13,230	164,131	12.41
6	International Diary Journal	1,201	14,469	12.05
7	British Journal of Nutrition	2,906	33,343	11.47
8	Nutrition Reviews	878	9,944	11.33
9	Journal of Diary Science	4,793	51,284	10.70
10	European Journal of Soil Science	837	8,905	10.64
11	European Journal of Agronomy	611	6,435	10.53
12	Food Additives & Contaminants	1,237	12,737	10.30
13	Journal of Cereal Science	776	7,837	10.10
14	Food Research International	1,237	12,360	9.99
15	Applied Soil Ecology	817	8,125	9.94
16	Food Hydrocolloids	1,166	11,410	9.79
17	Geoderma	1,612	15,733	9.76
18	Postharvest Biology and Technology	1,264	12,317	9.74
19	Food Microbiology	902	8,663	9.60
20	Soil & Tillage Research	1,131	10,699	9.46

The data above were extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters. This database, currently covering the period January 2000 through February 2010, 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 to those articles are for the period indicated.

Here our ranking of journals in agricultural sciences 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 agricultural sciences, 163 journals are listed, meaning 326 journals in this field were surveyed.

Of these 163 journals, 92 published 500 or more papers during the period. This ranking of the top 20 should be recognised as distinctly different 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 3 to a journal’s contents in Years 1 and 2, divided by the number of so-called citable items (regular articles and reviews) in Years 1 and 2. Thus, the above ranking reveals longer-term impact (citations per paper).

For more information on Essential Science Indicators, see http://science.thomsonreuters.com/products/esi