The latest Journal Citation Reports, released by Clarivate in June 2025, have granted three ARPHA-hosted, open-access journals their first Journal Impact Factors (JIF).
Metabarcoding and Metagenomics (MBMG), Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS), and Frontiers of Biogeography (FoB) achieved impressive scores of 3.1, 3.0, and 2.5, respectively, highlighting their growing impact and relevance to the academic community.
The metric reflects the number of times a journal’s content from 2022 and 2023 was cited in 2024. This total citation count is then divided by the number of “citable” articles (i.e., research and review articles) to estimate the JIF.
This achievement reflects the hard work of the editorial teams and authors at each of the journals, as well as the efforts of ARPHA’s dedicated, in-house indexing team, who help journals apply for important academic indexing databases, including Web of Science and Scopus. Indexation in such databases allows journals to become eligible for metrics like the JIF and CiteScore, which are often considered by researchers deciding where to publish their work.
ARPHA’s indexing service includes evaluation of a given journal’s current status against the requirements of prestigious databases, advice on how to meet these requirements, and overall assistance in the application process.
Want to know more? Learn about indexing and numerous other services, both automated and human-provided, offered by ARPHA here.
“The Impact Factor is an important metric for scientific metrics. And we know that not having one hinders especially early career researchers to submit their research to us earlier. Therefore, we are very happy that MBMG has received this important metric, and with a value of 3.1 we’re even more happy that this is a very competitive one.”
Florian Leese, MBMG Editor-in-Chief.
“We are delighted to see the journal receive its first Impact Factor. We expect that both Journal Impact Factor and CiteScore will further increase in 2026.
Jürgen Dengler, Idoia Biurrun and Wolfgang Willner, VCS Chief Editors.
“Thanks to all our editors, reviewers and authors who made this success possible and to IAVS for subsidizing the APCs of VCS during the first few years. We look forward to receiving more high-quality submissions in the fields of vegetation classification and ecoinformatics, the two strongholds of VCS.”
“When The International Biogeography Society launched Frontiers of Biogeography under the editorship of Joaquín Hortal in 2009, we had a vision of it becoming an adaptable, independent, society-owned journal with a distinctive place in the journal publishing landscape. The attainment of our first Clarivate Journal Impact Factor is testimony to the hard work by our past and present editors and reviewers, and to the quality and interest level of the work that our community has entrusted to the journal for publication.
Robert J. Whittaker, Frontiers of Biogeography Editor-in-Chief.
“Working together with the team at Pensoft we are confident that we can continue to grow the journal as a favoured venue for Open Access publication of cutting-edge biogeographical research.”
