Journal of Biological Chemistry


The Journal of Biological Chemistry is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1905. Since 1925, it is published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. It covers research in areas of biochemistry and molecular biology. The editor-in-chief is Lila Gierasch. All its articles are available free after one year of publication. In press articles are available free on its website immediately after acceptance.

Editors in chief

The following individuals have served as editor-in-chief of the journal:
The editors of the Journal of Biological Chemistry have criticized the modern reliance upon the impact factor for ranking journals, noting that review articles, commentaries, and retractions are included in the calculation. Further, the denominator of total articles published encourages journals to be overly selective in what they publish, and preferentially publish articles which will receive more attention and citations.
Due to these factors, the journal's practice of publishing a broad cross-section of biochemistry articles has led it to suffer in impact factor, in 2006 ranking 260 of 6,164, while remaining a highly cited journal. When science journals were evaluated with a PageRank-based algorithm, however, the Journal of Biological Chemistry ranked first. Using the Eigenfactor metric, the Journal of Biological Chemistry ranked 5th among all ISI-indexed journals in 2010. The impact factor of the journal in 2019 was 4.238.

History and classic papers

The journal was established in 1905 by John Jacob Abel and Christian Archibald Herter, who also served as the first editors; the first issue appeared in October 1905. The location of the journal's editorial offices has included Cornell Medical College, Yale University, Harvard University, and New York City. the journal is published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
The most cited paper of all time was published in the journal by Oliver H. Lowry on Protein measurement with the Folin phenol reagent and describes the Lowry protein assay, and has been cited well-over 300,000 times. In 1990, librarian Eugene Garfield wrote that the "Journal of Biological Chemistry lead the list of journals ranked by the number of SCI Top papers published", with 17 of the top 100 most cited papers published. The next journals on the list were Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with 6, then Nature, with 5.