The global ranking of academic journals’ impact on WeChat announced

Linkresearcher

, an academic communication service platform under “Global Science,” the Chinese version of the “Scientific American,” collaborated with Impact Science, a Cactus Communications (CACTUS) brand that provides science communications strategy and tactics, to announce a ranking of academic journals based on new media influence.

The Global Ranking of Academic Journals’ Impact for the first quarter of 2021 was released. It lists the 500 most prominent academic journals as well as the 50 most influential publishing brands around the world that demonstrated outstanding dissemination performance on the WeChat platform from January through March of 2021. The rankings provide insight on the dissemination power of journals in the fields of Chemistry, Material Science, Energy & Environment, Medicine, Biology, Agriculture, Forestry, Botany, Ecology, and other active academic disciplines. From January to March, semantic mining was conducted on about 70,000 sentences, and more than 1,200 independent Chinese and foreign academic journals were extracted from the titles of WeChat posts. The volume of posts read was then used to represent the power of dissemination of each journal.

The top 10 journals are prestigious and well-known internationally. Among the top 100, the 5 journals with the largest rise in rankings compared to last year are The Innovation (up by 50 places), Nature Genetics (up by 41 places), Cell Stem Cell (up by 32 places), JAMA: The Journal of The American Medical Association (up by 29 places), and The ISME Journal (up by 23 places).

Commenting on this, Liu Fang, the Publisher of Global Science, Chinese Edition of Scientific American said, “The Chinese academic new media platform has entered the period of rapid change. This not only provides Chinese scientists with better information services, but also provides valuable insight on international academic trends as well as Chinese scientific research trends.”

Christine Hu, General Manager of Greater China at CACTUS, also added, “For any research to have an impact, it is imperative to maximize the reach and scope of the target audience. We are pleased to see that WeChat has been sought after by international publishers as a new communication channel to reach Chinese audiences. Furthermore, new media will increasingly become a more reliable channel for academic research and communication, thereby promoting the globalization of scientific research.”

In the first quarter of 2021, the 500 most prestigious academic journals on the WeChat platform receive more than 14,000 mentions on WeChat posts with 21.83 million significant reaches. Among the 500, the top 10 journals were the primary focus of impact on WeChat. With more than 5,000 mentions and more than 15.8 million reaches alone, the top 10 journals account for more than 70% of the total impact of all 500 journals. All 10 journals are prestigious and well-known internationally–they comprise four comprehensive journals: Nature, Science, Nature Communications, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences; three journals in Chemistry, Material Science, and Energy & Environment: Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Advanced Materials; two medical journals: The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet; and one journal in Biology: Cell.

27% of the most impactful journals are from China and the three most “prestigious” journals in China are ranked 17th, 22nd, and 25th on the global list.

A total of 137 academic journals from China made it to the top 500 of the Global Academic Journals’ Impact Ranking on WeChat for the first quarter of 2021, amounting to about 27% of the total number of journals. The three Chinese journals with the highest rankings are Molecular Plant (17th), The Innovation (22nd), and Horticulture Research (25th).

Including these three journals, a total of 22 journals made it to the top 100 on the list. Overall, Chinese journals seemed to have a fairly even distribution across each ranking segment. The 201-300 segment was the most densely distributed region, with a total of 35 Chinese journals in the segment.

The 2021 Global Ranking of Academic Journals’ Impact on WeChat will dynamically track the dissemination of Chinese and global academic journals on the WeChat platform and periodically take note of the most communicative academic journals in order to provide a new reference point for the evaluation of academic journals’ social influence.

A total of 68 Chinese and foreign academic publishers have participated in the publication of the listed journals. By measuring the traffic of academic journals under each publisher on the WeChat platform, we were able to put together the top 50 impactful publishers on WeChat for the first quarter of 2021. The top 10 publishers in terms of impact on WeChat are: Nature Portfolio, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Wiley, Cell Press, The American Chemical Society, Elsevier, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, Oxford University Press, and Springer. Elsevier topped the list with 75 journals. China’s local publishers also exhibited strength in this area. A total of 19 Chinese local publishers made it to the top 50 list, among which KeAi Publishing(), China Science Publishing & Media(), Power System Technology Magazine(), Science in China Press(), and Light Publishing Group(Light) made it to the top 20.

Click here to view the full list.

Different publishers leading journal impact in different disciplines.

The major publishing companies have demonstrated different dominance in different subject areas. Materials Chemistry, Medicine, Biology, and Ecological Agriculture & Forestry are the four most active fields in terms of journal impact on WeChat. The most popular publishing brands in these four areas are Wiley (30.24%), The Lancet (35.1%), Cell Press (71.05%), and

Among them, publishing companies have the largest difference in impact in the field of Biology, with Cell Press accountable for a dominating 71.05% of the dissemination power. On the other hand, three very influential publishers–namely Wiley (30.24%), The American Chemical Society (29.25%), and Nature Portfolio (25.51%)–led the field of Materials Chemistry. However, further detailed analysis revealed that these three publishers played different roles within the field–Wiley occupied the top place in terms of general impact of journals in the field of Materials Chemistry; The American Chemical Society’s strength lies in the comprehensive journals of Chemistry and in the nanoscale and environmental aspect; Nature Portfolio has the advantage in the impact of journals in the energy and catalysis fields.

Based on the analysis and mining of data from the “Linkresearcher Academic Official Account Database,” Linkresearcher first released the Global Ranking of Academic Journals’ Impact on WeChat towards the end of 2020 and two lists were launched in the fourth quarter of 2020. In 2021, Linkresearcher’s Global Ranking of Academic Journals’ Impact on WeChat will work together with Impact Science. Combining Impact Science and global research communication philosophies, the list will continue to expand the scope of attention and explore, in depth, the impact of academic publishing, academic communication, and scientific research on Chinese researchers and the public.

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