Journal Ranks 2021

Now that Clarivate, Google, and Scopus have recently published their respective journal citation scores for 2021, I can now present — for the 14^th year running on ConvervationBytes.com — the 2021 conservation/ecology/sustainability journal ranks based on my journal-ranking method.

Like last year, I’ve added a few journals. I’ve also included in the ranking the Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) in addition to the Journal Impact Factor and Immediacy Index from Clarivate ISI, and the CiteScore (CS) in addition to the Source-Normalised Impact Per Paper (SNIP) and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) from Scopus.

You can access the raw data for 2021 and use my RShiny app to derive your own samples of journal ranks.

I therefore present the new 2021 ranks for: (i) 106 ecology, conservation and multidisciplinary journals, (ii) 27 open-access (i.e., you have to pay) journals from the previous category, (iii) 64 ‘ecology’ journals, (iv) 32 ‘conservation’ journals, (v) 43 ‘sustainability’ journals (with general and energy-focussed journals included), and (vi) 21 ‘marine & freshwater’ journals.

Remember not to take much notice if a journal boasts about how its Impact Factor has increased this year, because these tend to increase over time anyway What’s important is a journal’s relative (to other journals) rank.

Here are the results:

(i) ecology, conservation and multidisciplinary

Here’s a more focussed list of the top-20 journals from above:

Nature Human Behaviour has climbed the ladder considerably since last year, as has Current Biology. eLife also sneaks into the top 20 this year.

From the full sample above, here is the ranking for those journals that are open-access, if you fancy paying several thousands (if not tens of thousands) of dollars/euros/pounds for the privilege:

(ii) ecology journals

Not many changes for the ecology journals, although Ecography is again one to watch, keeping on its gradual creep upward. One Earth has now also entered the fray with its first set of indices, and remarkably, gets to the top 20 in its first assessment year..

Here’s a closer look at the top-20 from that last list:

(iii) conservation journals

Here is the most interesting list for ConservationBytes.com readers:

This hasn’t changed much from last year either, with Biological Conservation maintaining its slightly higher ranking than Conservation Biology for a second year in a row. One Earth, as in the ecology rank, has done exceptionally well here for its first inclusion. Note too that I’ve included People and Nature this year, and it too comes in quite highly ranked.

(iv) sustainability journals

In the ‘sustainability’ journals (including some general-category ones too), not much has changed since last year, apart from that impressive start from One Earth: