Overview of the Most Prestigious Immunology Journals in 2018: A Descriptive Study

Immunology is the science of prevention of entry and encounter with internal and external antigenes, with the aim of preserving the body's natural homeostasis. Due to the importance of immunology in prevention and treatment of diseases and concerning the multiplicity of published journals in this field, this study was performed to introduce the most prestigious specialized immunology journals for the first time for Persian language readers. This descriptive study was conducted in 2018 at Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences. The list of immunology journals was extracted from the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) and Journal Citation Reports (JCR) WebSites. For this purpose, in the "Subject Area" of the SJR website “Immunology and Microbiology” words and in the "Subject Category" “Immunology” word and in the "Select Categories" of JCR website “Immunology” word were searched. The Journals’ list extracted from SJR and JCR contained 209 and 155 Immunology journals, respectively. Considering the high number of specialized journals in immunology, the journals containing the term of “immunology” in title were studied. The investigated information of the journals included journal’s name, country of presentation, publisher, subject of coverage, the most important indexes of the journal, date of publication of the journal, hirsch index, duration of publishing, and impact factor in 2018. According to the entry of clinical basic field in immunology, a lot of journals published in this science and consequently, immunology journals are categorized in two clinical and basic groups. Despite the high number of immunology journals, most journals tend to publish research and specialized articles.