Coming soon: 2017 analysis based on the most recent Journal Citation Reports by Clarivate Analytics (formerly published by Thomson Reuters).

08.Jul.2016: In June 2016, Frontiers in Psychology, received the 2015 Impact Factor of 2.463.  For two years in a row, it is the largest and the #2 most-cited psychology journal in the world.

Impact Factor (IF), defined as the total number of citations in a given year divided by the number of citable articles over the previous two-year period, is the most commonly accepted metric of journal quality (but not of an individual paper or researcher). It was formally established by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in 1975. As the IF can be heavily skewed by a few highly-cited papers, total citations generated over the same two-year period provide a more accurate indication of the overall  influence or impact of the articles published by a journal in a field. Frontiers is a pioneer in the use of article-level and author-level metrics and encourages every author to use these to track the development of his or her readership on a more granular level.

Analysis within the category of Psychology

There are 606 journals listed in the category of Psychology in the 2015 Journal Citations Reports (JCR) provided by Thomson Reuters in 2016. Frontiers in Psychology and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience are two of the 19 open-access journals.

Below, the results of our comparative analysis on the article volume published, IF achieved and the total number of citations achieved in 2015, based on articles published over the two preceding years, 2013 and 2014. (Click here to see the volume and number of citations of other Frontiers journals).

Total citations among all open-access journals in Psychology

Figure 1. Total number of citations in 2015 for articles published in 2013 and 2014, ranked for all (19) open-access journals listed in the Psychology JCR category. Plot shows ranks for the top 16 most-cited open-access journals, where (in red) Frontiers in Psychology ranks #2 most-cited, and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience ranks #1 most cited. The journal analysis is based on the 2015 Journal Citation Reports published by Thomson Reuters in 2016.

Total citations among all journals in Psychology

Figure 2. Total number of citations in 2015 for published in 2013 and 2014, ranked for all 606 journals (open-access and subscription) listed in the Psychology JCR category. Plot shows the ranks for the top 20 most-cited journals, where  (in red) Frontiers in Psychology ranks #2 most-cited, and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience ranks #1 most cited. The journal analysis is based on the 2015 Journal Citation Reports published by Thomson Reuters in 2016

Relationship between volume and Impact Factor for all open-access journals in Psychology

Figure 3. Volume of citable items in 2015, plotted against the 2015 journal Impact Factor, for all 19 open-access journals listed in the Psychology JCR category. Plot shows all open-access journals in the category, with (in red) Frontiers in Psychology and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Dot size is proportional to the total number of citations received during the citation-counting period. The journal analysis is based on the 2015 Journal Citation Reports published by Thomson Reuters in 2016. 

Relationship between volume and Impact Factor for all journals in Psychology

Figure 4. Volume of citable items in 2015, plotted against the 2015 journal Impact Factor, for all 606 journals (open-access  and subscription) listed in the Psychology  JCR category. Plot shows all journals in the category, with (in red) Frontiers in Psychology and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Dot size is proportional to the total number of citations received during the citation-counting period. The journal analysis is based on the 2015 Journal Citation Reports published by Thomson Reuters in 2016. 

Summary

Amongst the 19 open-access journals listed in the categories of Psychology, Frontiers in Psychology:

• Is the largest open-access journal in Psychology – 11 times larger than the average article volume in open access journals in Psychology.

• Is the 2nd most-cited journal in 2015 based on articles published in 2013 and 2014

• Is in the top 8% on Impact Factor – 2 higher than the average for Psychology.

Amongst all of the 606 journals listed in the categories of Psychology, Frontiers in Psychology:

• Is the world’s largest psychology journal overall – 27 times larger than the average article volume in all journals in Psychology.

• Is the 2nd most-cited journal in 2015 based on articles published in 2013 and 2014.

• Is in the top 23% on Impact Factor.

In summary, Frontiers in Psychology, one of the youngest journals publishing peer-reviewed scholarly articles in psychology, has become the largest and 2nd most-cited journal in psychology with an impact factor in the top 23%.

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, also listed in the 2015 JCR category of Psychology, is the most-cited and 3rd largest Psychology journal. Other Frontiers journals listed in the 2015 Journal Citation Reports follow a similar pattern – view the analysis here.

Further significance

The results are more significant if one considers:

1. Frontiers does not engineer the IF by setting a rejection rate, and instead operates an impact neutral peer-review process.

2. Frontiers in Psychology is only 6 years old and the results represented here are based on articles published between 2013-2014 (its 3rd and 4th year in existence).

Key to success

At Frontiers, we publish all articles that are scientifically correct. We engineered the Collaborative Peer Review with a review mandate focused on enhancing article quality by means of rigorous and constructive feedback from expert reviewers, quick and direct interactions between authors, reviewers and the editor enabled by our review forum platform, and we enhance transparency by acknowledging reviewers and editors on the published articles. This performance analysis indicates that the impact neutral Collaborative Peer Review conducted in Frontiers together with an outstanding editorial board has become a powerful model for publishing quality academic papers at scale.

All of this is only possible with a stellar editorial board of researchers (see infographic). Frontiers congratulates Field Chief Editor Axel Cleeremans for leading this field so successfully, the stellar board of Specialty Chief Editors (see below) for their work in building the community, the Associate Editors for safeguarding the integrity of the Frontiers peer-review and the outstanding Review Editors for their dedication and diligence in the peer-review process, as well as the Frontiers Journal Management team for their support to the editors.

Frontiers in Psychology fact sheet (as of June 2016):

 The same analysis of volume, impact factor and number of citations of other Frontiers journals  in the 2015 JCR can be found here.

Similar analysis for the 2014 JCR can be found here.

Chief Editors (see full board):

Axel Cleeremans, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium | Field Chief Editor, Frontiers in Psychology

Isabelle Peretz, Université de Montréal, Canada | Specialty Chief Editor, Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience

Robert J Zatorre, McGill University, Canada | Specialty Chief Editor, Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience

Lorenza S Colzato, Leiden University, Netherlands | Specialty Chief Editor, Cognition

Bernhard Hommel, Leiden University | Specialty Chief Editor, Cognition

Eddy J Davelaar, University of London, United Kingdom | Specialty Chief Editor, Cognitive Science

Jeffrey R Stevens, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA | Specialty Chief Editor, Comparative Psychology

Morten Overgaard, Aarhus University, Denmark | Specialty Chief Editor, Consciousness Research

Yulia Chentsova Dutton, Georgetown University, USA| Specialty Chief Editor, Cultural Psychology

Natasha Kirkham, Cornell University, USA | Specialty Chief Editor, Developmental Psychology

Jessica S Horst, University of Sussex, United Kingdom |Specialty Chief Editor, Developmental Psychology

Claus Vögele, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg | Specialty Chief Editor, Eating Behavior

Adrian Meule, University of Salzburg, Austria | Specialty Chief Editor, Eating Behavior

Douglas Kauffman, Boston University School of Medicine, USA | Specialty Chief Editor, Educational Psychology

Beatrice De Gelder, Maastricht University, Belgium | Specialty Chief Editor, Emotion Science

Marina A Pavlova, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany | Specialty Chief Editor, Emotion Science

Patrik Sörqvist, University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden | Specialty Chief Editor, Environmental Psychology

Manuel Carreiras, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Spain | Specialty Chief Editor, Language Sciences

Guy Cheron, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium | Specialty Chief Editor, Movement Science and Sport Psychology

Richard Eleftherios Boyatzis, Case Western Reserve University, USA | Specialty Chief Editor, Organizational Psychology

Rufin VanRullen, Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, France | Specialty Chief Editor, Perception Science

Aaron Williamon, Royal College of Music, Imperial College London, United Kingdom | Specialty Chief Editor, Performance Science

Marcel Zentner, University of Innsbruck, Austria | Specialty Chief Editor, Personality and Social Psychology

Anat Bardi, Royal Holloway University of London Egham, United Kingdom | Specialty Chief Editor, Personality and Social Psychology

Ariane Bazan, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium | Specialty Chief Editor, Psychoanalysis and Neuropsychoanalysis

Gianluca Castelnuovo, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy | Specialty Chief Editor, Psychology for Clinical Settings

Antoine Bechara, University of Southern California, USA | Specialty Chief Editor, Psychopathology

Xavier Noel, F.R.S.-F.N.R.S, Belgium | Specialty Chief Editor, Psychopathology

Jill L Adelson, University of Louisville, USA | Specialty Chief Editor, Quantitative Psychology and Measurement

Jason C. Immekus, University of Louisville, USA | Specialty Chief Editor, Quantitative Psychology and Measurement

Markus Werning, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany | Specialty Chief Editor, Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology

Erica Cosentino, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany | Assistant Specialty Chief Editor, Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology

Hauke R Heekeren, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany | Specialty Chief Editor, Decision Neuroscience

Paul E. M. Phillips, University of Washington, USA | Specialty Chief Editor, Decision Neuroscience

Liaquat Hossain, The University of Hong Kong Australia | Specialty Chief Editor, Disaster Communications

Kath Woodward, Open University, United Kingdom | Specialty Chief Editor, Gender Sex and Sexuality Studies

Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, Netherlands | Specialty Chief Editor, Human-Media Interaction

A special thanks goes to:

Lera Boroditsky, Stanford University, USA | Former Specialty Chief Editor, Cultural Psychology

Philippe G Schyns, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom | Former Specialty Chief Editor, Perception Science

Luiz Pessoa, University of Maryland, USA | Former Specialty Chief Editor, Emotion Science