Max Withers refers to ISI JSR -- :-) -- for the rest of us, the Journal of Citation Reports. It's at http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/… . I confess that when I mentioned the status of publications, I was not thinking statistically. For anyone who wants to consult ISI JCR, an immediate problem is that (as with other online references that try to make a profit) if one lacks an institutional subscription one must either pay to get in or corrupt a friend with the entry code. This has to do with the ownership of knowledge. A deeper problem is the definition of knowledge. "Sources most cited" might not be the most accurate. Surely accuracy counts most. Copernicus said in the 16th century that Earth circles the Sun. Until then, for millennia, most savants had imagined, or repeated, that the Sun circles Earth. "Sources most cited" in the 16th century would not have highlighted Copernicus. Habit, fashion, ignorance, sycophancy, doziness, fear for one's life: nonsense is repeated for many reasons. This said, from time to time I read the "most cited" journals that Max mentions. When I can gain access to them. ;-) Paige Woodward paige@hillkeep.ca http://www.hillkeep.ca/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Max Withers" <maxwithers@gmail.com> To: <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 2:23 PM Subject: Re: [pbs] Status of Merendera >A professional could probably answer this easily, but a quick look at > ISI JSR (which determines the "impact factors" of scientific journals, > basically by the frequency of cited articles) shows that Taxon has the > highest factor (2.524) of any journal devoted specifically to > systematics. Systematic Botany (NYBG) is 1.632; Botanical Journal of the > Linnean Society is 1.075. They don't cover Bot. Jb. fur Systematik. > > The Annual Review of Plant Biology has the highest impact factor in the > plant sciences, at 18.712, but all the rest are below 10. Nature, by > contrast, is 28.751. > > Max Withers > Oakland CA .org/mailman/listinfo/pbs > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ >