Domestic journal becomes top-tier science platform

Domestically-founded Cell Research has become a world-class scientific journal, as measured by its impact factor.

Impact factor is a measure of how often a journal is cited, as indicated in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) by Clarivate Analytics, which evaluates the world's high-quality academic journals.

The 2020 edition of JCR, released on June 29, covers 12,171 journals from 83 countries.

The report uses a range of journal citation indicators, descriptive data and visualizations drawn from 2019 data in the Web of Science Core Collection to provide a thorough view of journal performance.

Cell Research, co-sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Society for Cell Biology, performed best among domestic scientific journals.

It ranks 78th on the impact factor list of the JCR's 2020 update.

Out of 195 cell and biology journals worldwide, it was seventh place, exceeding Nature’s highly selective sister journals Nature Cell Biology and Nature Structure and Molecular Biology. Among life sciences journals in the Asia-Pacific area, it is number one.

“It means that our journal has truly grown to a world-class scientific journal,” said deputy Editor-in-Chief Li Dangsheng. “It offers Chinese scientists a trusted platform with global influence to show their results. It also increases our academic prestige, reputation and influence in the global academic stage.”

Founded in 1990, the journal, published in English, has seen dramatic impact factor increases over recent years. In 2006, its impact factor was just 2.16. It rose to a reading of 10 in 2013 and this year it broke 20.

It has also published many groundbreaking domestic research results.

In 2014, professor Yu Li from Tsinghua University discovered a new organelle during cell migration. Due to lack of proven functions for this newly identified organelle, his paper was declined by a top-tier leading scientific journal, yet Cell Research recognized and published his findings. Five years later, Yu showed solid evidence to prove his discovery.

Now, as a well-accepted leading academic platform, nearly half of the papers published in the journal are contributed by overseas scientists.