The European Ecological Federation decided to launch a Platinum Open Access general ecology journal back in 2020, and ever since our high-quality journal has been free to publish and free to read.
Quantifying the scientific impact of a journal in a field is a tricky business, and overreliance on indexes and indicators can be misleading. However, indexes can be useful if used with proper context. In practical terms, journals receiving more citations get higher index values, and those indexes are loosely used as a proxy of “success”. However, it is always worth to insist that these indexes are relative and can’t be interpreted more than in an generic and flexible way.
With all those cautions in place, we are happy to announce that 20 years of excellent work by a long list of renowned Editors, reviewers, and by the constant support of the European Ecological Federation, Web Ecology has just increased significantly their impact, as inferred from the two most widespread independent indexing companies.
Web_Ecology increased its Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports Impact Factor by 35%, from 1.15 to 1.56, and pushing our journal from the fourth quartile of the Ecology journals, to a consolidated position in the third quartile (Q3). Just a week ago we learnt that the other independent indexing company Scopus, also increased Web Ecology’s CiteScore index to 2.3, from previous’ year 1.5, and moving it from Q3 to Q2. Different indexes consider different years for their calculations, and thus the differences between them.
This consolidates Web Ecology as the leading Ecology journal with a Platinum Open Access model, and one of the very few in any area, really, with a similar impact and model. We congratulate to all the parts involved, and to the scientific community, and hopefully we would be setting an example of what is possible that hopefully will be followed by others.
Thank you to all the Editorial board in Web Ecology and in our publisher, Copernicus along all these years, and big thanks to all our devoted reviewers and readers.
