The ''Biochemical Journal'' is a

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such ...

which covers all aspects of

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

, as well as cell and

molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and phys ...

. It is published by Portland Press and was established in 1906.

History

The journal was established in 1906 by Benjamin Moore, holder of the first UK chair of biochemistry at the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

, with financial support from Edward Whitley, an heir of the Greenall Whitley brewers.Clark J. Biochemical Journal Centenary (2006)
(accessed 30 September 2007) The two served as the first editors and the journal was initially published by the

Liverpool University Press Liverpool University Press (LUP), founded in 1899, is the third oldest university press in England after Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. As the press of the University of Liverpool, it specialises in modern languages, li ...

.Anon (1906) ''Bio-Chemical Journal'' 1: i–iii
(accessed 30 September 2007) It was acquired by the Biochemical Club (later renamed the

Biochemical Society The Biochemical Society is a learned society in the United Kingdom in the field of biochemistry, including all the cellular and molecular biosciences. Structure It currently has around 7000 members, two-thirds in the UK. It is affiliated with t ...

) in October 1912, shortly after the society's foundation; at that time the journal had 170 subscribers. From 1913, it was published in conjunction with

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pr ...

, with

William Bayliss Sir William Maddock Bayliss (2 May 1860 – 27 August 1924) was an English physiologist. Life He was born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire but shortly thereafter his father, a successful merchant of ornamental ironwork, moved his family to a ...

and Arthur Harden chairing the

editorial board The editorial board is a group of experts, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take. Mass media At a newspaper, the editorial board usually consists of the editorial page editor, ...

; the original title of ''The Bio-Chemical Journal'' became ''The Biochemical Journal'' at that date. The journal at first appeared at irregular intervals, with between three and twelve issues appearing annually in a single volume. From 1948, two volumes were published annually, with four or five parts per volume, and the frequency increased rapidly over the years, reaching the current frequency of eight volumes in three parts in 1974.

Current journal

Eight volumes are published each year with each volume consisting of three parts (24 issues per year). To mark the centenary of the journal in 2006, a free online archive back to the journal's first issue in 1906 was launched. All papers are available as

pdf Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

s, and recent papers are also available in a proprietary format called Enhanced Electronic Serials Interface-View (EESI-View). The journal won the first Charlesworth Award of the

Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) is an international trade association of non-profit publishers created in 1972. It is the largest association of scholarly and professional publishers in the world, with nearl ...

(ALPSP) for Best Online Journal in 2007. The judges described the online journal as '"visually attractive and easy to use ... maintains the character of the journal while exploiting the digital medium to offer a range of additional features". Towards the end of 2009, the journal launched a new technological innovation: the Semantic Biochemical Journal. The software used,

Utopia Documents Utopia Documents is a semantic, scientific, web-enabled PDF reader that is part of the Utopia toolset. Utopia Documents can be downloaded for free. Utopia provides links to web resources and metadata. Although Utopia is a PDF-reader, it bridges ...

, transforms the content of the journal by dynamically linking documents to research data, enabling readers to interact with and manipulate the information in the journal's scientific papers more effectively. The software turns static images, tables, and text into objects that can be linked, annotated, visualized, and analysed interactively.

Highly-cited papers

The journal has published many highly cited papers. There are more than 100 that have been cited more than 1000 times each, and the following have been cited more than 5000 times each: * (cited more than 17,000 times) * (cited more than 10,000 times) *

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in

Elsevier Biobase Elsevier BIOBASE is a bibliographic database covering all topics pertaining to biological research throughout the world. It was established in the 1950s in print format as ''Current Awareness in Biological Sciences''. Temporal coverage is fro ...

BIOSIS Previews BIOSIS Previews is an English-language, bibliographic database service, with abstracts and citation indexing. It is part of '' Clarivate Analytics Web of Science'' suite. BIOSIS Previews indexes data from 1926 to the present. BIOSIS Previews ...

, CAB International,

Chemical Abstracts Service CAS (formerly Chemical Abstracts Service) is a division of the American Chemical Society. It is a source of chemical information. CAS is located in Columbus, Ohio, United States. Print periodicals ''Chemical Abstracts'' is a periodical index th ...

Current Contents ''Current Contents'' is a rapid alerting service database from Clarivate Analytics, formerly the Institute for Scientific Information and Thomson Reuters. It is published online and in several different printed subject sections. History ''C ...

, Embase,

International Food Information Service IFIS is an academic publishing company and not-for-profit organisation operating in the sciences of food and health. Based in Reading, IFIS produces the online bibliographic database, FSTA, a resource which the company has offered since 1969. FS ...

MEDLINE MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering med ...

Index Medicus ''Index Medicus'' (''IM'') is a curated subset of MEDLINE, which is a bibliographic database of life science and biomedical science information, principally scientific journal articles. From 1879 to 2004, ''Index Medicus'' was a comprehensi ...

, ProQuest databases, and the

Science Citation Index The Science Citation Index Expanded – previously entitled Science Citation Index – is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and created by Eugene Garfield. It was officially launched in 1964 ...

. According to the ''

Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationby Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters). It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science-Core Colle ...

'', the journal has a 2019

impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...

of 4.097.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.biochemj.org/
Top 50 most frequently read papers and reviews
Delayed open access journals Publications established in 1906 Biochemistry journals English-language journals Semi-monthly journals Hybrid open access journals 1906 establishments in England