In the final 2011 data released by Thomson Reuters, Behavioral and Brain Sciences(BBS) remains the top journal across the entire Social Science Citation Index® with an Impact Factor of 25.056. It is ranked #1 in Biological Psychology in the SSCI®.

BBS is also covered by the Science Citation Index®, where it is also ranked #1 in Behavioral Sciences as well as #3 in Neurosciences. It sits in the 32nd spot among the 8,281 journals covered by the SCI®.

An internationally renowned journal published by Cambridge University Press, with the innovative format known as Open Peer Commentary (OPC), BBS offers significant and controversial pieces of work from researchers in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, behavioral biology, and other related disciplines.

Unlike standard research journals, BBS is distinct in the behavioral sciences field in that each article is published together with 15-30 commentaries from specialists from multiple disciplines, plus the author’s response to them. These commentaries are considered by Thomson Reuters to be an integral part of the article, so they do not count towards article citations and do not affect the journal’s Impact Factor.

The journal’s editors, Paul Bloom, professor of psychology at Yale University, and Barbara L. Finlay, professor of psychology at Cornell University, discuss why the journal has such high impact: “We accept few articles. To appear on the pages of BBS, an article has to be broad in scope, innovative and important, and written with sufficient clarity to be accessible to a wide range of scholars. Given our Open Peer Commentary, once an article has appeared, it’s already been read by dozens of scholars, including leaders in the field, and their commentaries serve to spark further debate and discussion – which means more citations.”

BBS is one of over 300 journals published by Cambridge University Press. Many of these are also the leading academic publications in their fields and together they form one of the most valuable and comprehensive bodies of research available today.

For more information about Behavioral and Brain Sciences, please visit http://journals.cambridge.org/bbs

For more information on Cambridge Journals, please visit http://journals.cambridge.org

For further information about Impact Factors please visit http://www.scientific.thomson.com