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Impact and metrics

We believe research should be free to read for all and with each year the share of content we have published open access (OA) has grown. Our own analysis has shown that content published OA is cited and downloaded more than paywalled content providing a clear benefit of OA to authors. In 2024 over two thirds of the articles we published were freely available immediately upon publication.  .

As we implement Subscribe to Open, the potential exists for 100% of our content to be made OA each year.  This is a conditional OA business model and complements our existing guaranteed OA pathway for subscribers who have opted for a Read & Publish license. Both models support fee-free research for scientists worldwide, both at points of producing as well as consuming research literature.

The Board of Portland Press decided unanimously to open content for 2025 volumes of all five subscription titles under Subscribe to Open and consequently none of these titles will impose an author-facing publishing charge.

Citations and impact

The Journal Impact Factor provides a measure of the average number of citations received by a journal in a given year. It is calculated by dividing the number of yearly citations to content published in a given period by the total number of items published within that period (more information on this can be found on the Clarivate website). The Impact Factors for our journal titles are provided under ‘Impact and Information’ at individual journal level.

As a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the Biochemical Society/Portland Press recognises that Impact Factors are just one of many ways of assessing journal performance and should not be used in isolation to evaluate impact. 

The following list provides a view of a range of impacts for each of our journals.  

Biochemical Journal

Impact Factor: 4.3
5-year Impact Factor: 3.9
Immediacy index: 0.6
Cited half-life: 19.5 years
SNIP: 0.981
Full-text downloads: 1.2 million

Biochemical Society Transactions

Impact Factor: 4.3
5-year Impact Factor: 4.4
Immediacy index: 0.7
Cited half-life: 9.5 years
SNIP: 0.972
Full-text downloads: 1 million

Bioscience Reports

Impact Factor: 4.7
5-year Impact Factor: 3.4
Immediacy index: 1.0
Cited half-life: 5.4 years
SNIP: 0.872
Full-text downloads: 1.6 million

Clinical Science

Impact Factor: 7.7
5-year Impact Factor: 6.4
Immediacy index: 1.3
Cited half-life: 8.3 years
SNIP: 1.298
Full-text downloads: 602k

Essays in Biochemistry

Impact Factor: 5.7
5-year Impact Factor: N/A
Immediacy index: 1.3
Cited half-life: 5.9 years
SNIP: 1.308
Full-text downloads: 513k

Article views and mentions

The Biochemical Society’s journals are widely read across the globe. All published articles display individual download and citation metrics, and we are partnered with Altmetric to measure attention and engagement of published research. Altmetric compiles metrics and qualitative data to complement traditional, citation-based metrics. Sourced from across the web, altmetrics indicate how often articles are discussed and used around the world.

In 2022 our articles were downloaded almost 5.5 million times and received over 21,000 Altmetric mentions.