Every year I give out a number of awards (See 2010 and 2011 awards here).
I usually do them all in one post, but this year I’m doing them mostly in separate posts.
This is the first post for 2012 awards and this is for Stem Cell Journal of the Year 2012.
Some brief background is in order.
Last year, Cell Stem Cell won this award. Cell Stem Cell is a mindbogglingly good journal. It has an impact factor of 25.4 and a 5-year impact factor of 27.5. What does this kind of impact factor really mean? This means they published papers that got people thinking, talking, and writing….and inspired people to do more research in exciting, new areas.
The journal Stem Cells was my choice for 2nd place last year. It too is an amazing journal. Its impact factor is lower at “only” 7.8 (which is still great), but it publishes more articles (e.g. 262 so far in 2012) than Cell Stem Cell (so far 169 in 2012).
In addition, Stem Cells publishes, I would argue, a greater diversity of articles including more on mesenchymal stem cells and in particular focused specifically on differentiation. You can compare overall what they published in 2012 here and here in word clouds I generated.
What about 2012?
In the end, Cell Stem Cell is the winner of Stem Cell Journal of the Year 2012. I believe their overall influence on the stem cell field is the greatest, but I would note that this is the second year in a row where Stem Cells is narrowing the gap!