Rejuvenation Research Going Bimonthly
I noticed today that Rejuvenation Research, the journal of real, actual anti-aging medicine based on the repair of age-related cellular and molecular damage, is going bimonthly next year.
That's a strong continuation of the interest shown in this publication on the scientific path towards reversing aging. Last year, editor Aubrey de Grey noted:
The 2005 impact factors were announced yesterday, including the inaugural impact factor for Rejuvenation Research. I'm pleased to tell you that we obtained the very agreeable ranking of 8.571. This puts us at No. 1 in the "Gerontology and Geriatrics" category by a large margin, even including Aging Cell at 6.013 (which, for whatever reason, is not listed in that category). For a wider comparison, we would be No. 20 in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and No. 17 in Cell Biology, ahead of such prominent titles as Human Mol Genet, NAR, FASEB J, MCB, MBC, JCS, and Oncogene. ... Moreover, a rough calculation based on available data suggests that this is not a fluke arising from our conveniently small denominator this year -- we will be around the same level next year.
This year, indeed, the impact factor is around the same:
We are pleased to announce that our new impact factor is 8.353 - 2006 ISI Journal Citation Reports
A great showing, and congratulations are due once more:
Aubrey de Grey, at the helm of this multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal, seeks to understand and ultimately defy the mechanisms of aging. He was featured in a recent 60 Minutes segment titled "The Quest for Immortality"; in a cover story on de Grey, MIT's Technology Review said, "His tireless efforts...have put him among the most prominent proponents of antiaging science in the world. ... De Grey has become more than a man; he is a movement."Dr. de Grey and his outstanding international editorial board have the opportunity to further explore and advance the science, and perhaps achieve the ultimate goal of slowing or reversing the process of aging.
Rejuvenation Research, the Methuselah Foundation, the SENS conferences - these are all seeds for a mighty research community to come. The future I want to live to see is one in which a massive and thriving longevity research infrastructure exists, flush with the will and resources to match the cancer establishment of today - many overlapping and competing groups taking advantage of and driving the advance of biotechnology in order to defeat age-related suffering and death.
This is very plausible. How fast it comes to pass is up to us, as the speed of this progress depends on our vocal and material support. Do you want to live a much longer, healthier life, untroubled by the conditions that killed your ancestors? Then get up and help do something about it.
Technorati tags: aging, gerontology, life extension
Reason,
How much of that impact factor is a result of incestuous citation, i.e. RR articles citing other RR articles?
Good question. I can't answer that one immediately, but I should point out this rather good Wikipedia entry, which contains a section on self-citing as well as a variety of other caveats about how to interpret impact factor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor
I would guess that since RR isn't a review journal, and is considerably younger than other comparable journals of a similar impact rating, that self-citing contributes less to the total than in their case. I wouldn't imagine that there's a deliberate policy of such.
This is wonderful news.
There's nothing at all wrong with articles in a journal citing other articles in the same journal. This is a sign of a healthy scientific discipline. As the scientific authors are often not affliliated with the journal they are writing in, journals have limited control over how much their authors do this. It is of course in every journal's rational self-interest to excercise what ever limited control they do have over it to the maximum extent they can get away with. There is no reason to think that RR may be any better at this than its competitors.