Estuaries and coasts as an outlet for research in coastal ecosystems: A bibliometric study

Recent changes in the editorial leadership, name, content, and publishing process for Estuaries and Coasts and looming changes in scientific publishing as technology advances have provided an opportunity to assess the health and examine the growth in size and reputation of the journal. Estuaries and Coasts has grown in size by about fourfold, with a concurrent decline in acceptance rate of about 1.5% per year to reach the present 65% acceptance rate. The number of paper downloads has increased exponentially to the current 4,000 downloads per month. Most (81%) of the published papers come from senior authors in the USA, with only 15% of the papers coming from senior authors based in non-English-speaking countries. The average number of authors per paper increased from an average of two in 1980 to three at present, and the impact factor has risen to 1.563 in 2006, at about the middle of the range in impact factors for related journals, from an average of 1.295 in the previous 10 years. Papers published in Estuaries and Coasts have a long citation half-life (8.4 years), resulting in very few (3.5%) published papers never receiving citations. All metrics assessed portray Estuaries and Coasts as a journal on the rise that stands up in comparisons of quality and citation rate with other journals in its field.