For the first time in the history of Indian scientific journals, ‘Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants’ (PMBP), achieved a new performance milestone as a well cited international journal. The 2020 edition of ‘Journal Impact Factors’ released by Clarivate (USA) on 30th June gave PMBP an ‘impact factor’ of 2.391, over twice that of any other comparable Indian journal. Early in June, another global rating agency, Scopus, ranked PMBP in the top quartile of 445 plant science journals globally, with a Citescore of 3.4. These are well known indicators of the quality and performance of scientific journals, their editors and publishers globally.
“We are proud that PMBP is now the most cited international journal of Indian origin as per both the global rankings, ahead of hundreds of other plant journals globally. We knew this was coming, when we received badges for ‘Editorial Excellence’ among over 2190 Springernature journals for the last 2 years in a row” said Prof. Nandula Raghuram, one of the journal’s two Editors-in-Chief. He runs the journal’s Delhi editorial office from the School of Biotechnology, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi. “Our job as editors is to provide a journal that makes authors proud to publish their best work with us. All these indicators are just a means to that end” he added.
“PMBP’s growth in quality surpassed its own growth in quantitative terms. The number of articles grew only about 5-6 fold, but their quality measured by citations grew over 24 fold in 20 years”, said Prof. Rana Pratap Singh, its longest serving Editor-in-Chief from Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow. He is also the Secretary of Prof. H.S. Srivastava Foundation for Science and Society, Lucknow, which now owns the journal that celebrated its silver jubilee in 2020. “The journal now publishes over half of its articles from abroad and attracts international authors, reviewers and readers from over 60 countries” he added.
“PMBP is one of over 50 Indian journals published or distributed through Springernature, but its growth has been exceptionally good. It showcases the potential for world class publishing from India” said Dr. Mamta Kapila, Executive Editor of Indian biomedical and life sciences journals from the Springernature office in New Delhi. “Indian Plant science research output has been growing faster than the world average for decades, but only PMBP was able to capture a good share of that growth pie. We are excited to be a part of its excellence-led growth and wish to see it with more Indian journals”, she added.