Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Journal of Biological Chemistry" in English language version.
Notably, The Annual Review of Immunology had the highest Impact Factor score in 2005 with The Annual Review of Biochemistry rating second. This raises the question of whether citations in reviews should, in fact, be included in the data base used to calculate Impact Factors.... High Impact Factor journals, such as Science and Nature, publish letters, commentaries, and even retractions, all of which have citations that are included in the numerator without inclusion of their number in the denominator of the Impact Factor.
As a result of this policy, the Journal has grown over the past 20 years in parallel with the growth of research in the biological sciences, to the point that today it is the world's largest and most cited journal. This is not, however, necessarily a good thing for the presumed status of the Journal; it may be highly cited, but in 2006 it ranked only 260 among the 6,164 scientific journals evaluated by Impact Factor metrics.
