Journal of Molecular Biology

The Journal of Molecular Biology is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of molecular biology. It was established in 1959 by Academic Press in London.^[1][2] It is currently published by Elsevier. The editor-in-chief was Peter Wright (The Scripps Research Institute) for the last 33 years.^[3] He has been succeeded by Michael F. Summers (University of Maryland Baltimore County).^[4]

Journal of Molecular Biology

Discipline	Molecular biology
Language	English
Edited by	Michael F. Summers
Publication details
History	1959–present
Publisher	Elsevier
Frequency	Biweekly
Open access	Hybrid
Impact factor	4.7 (2023)
Standard abbreviations ISO 4 (alt) · Bluebook (alt) NLM (alt) · MathSciNet (alt )
ISO 4	J. Mol. Biol.
Indexing CODEN (alt · alt2) · JSTOR (alt) · LCCN (alt) MIAR · NLM (alt) · Scopus · W&L
CODEN	JMOBAK
ISSN	0022-2836 (print) 1089-8638 (web)
LCCN	61019997
OCLC no.	1782923
Links
Journal homepage Online archive

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in:

• Biological Abstracts^[5]
• BIOSIS Previews^[6]
• Chemical Abstracts Service^[7]
• Current Contents/Life Sciences^[6]
• Embase^[8]
• EMBiology
• Index Medicus/MEDLINE/PubMed^[9]
• Science Citation Index^[6]
• Scopus^[10]

According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2023 impact factor of 4.7.^[11]

Notable articles

Some of the most highly cited articles that have appeared in the journal are:

• Monod, J.; Wyman, J.; Changeux, J.-P. (1965). "On the Nature of Allosteric Transitions: A Plausible Model". Journal of Molecular Biology. 12: 88–118. doi:10.1016/S0022-2836(65)80285-6. PMID 14343300., in which Jacques Monod, Jeffries Wyman, and Jean-Pierre Changeux presented the MWC model, that explained the cooperativity exhibited by allosteric proteins, such as hemoglobin.
• Southern, E. M. (1975). "Detection of specific sequences among DNA fragments separated by gel electrophoresis". Journal of Molecular Biology. 98 (3): 503–517. doi:10.1016/S0022-2836(75)80083-0. PMID 1195397., in which Edwin Southern presented the first description of nucleic acid blotting, a technique that revolutionized the field of molecular biology.
• Smith, T.; Waterman, M.S. (1981). "Identification of common molecular subsequences". Journal of Molecular Biology. 147 (1): 195–197. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.63.2897. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(81)90087-5. PMID 7265238., in which the Smith–Waterman algorithm for determining the degree of homology of DNA, RNA, or protein sequences was first described.
• Altschul, Stephen; Gish, Warren; Miller, Webb; Myers, Eugene; Lipman, David (1990). "Basic local alignment search tool". Journal of Molecular Biology. 215 (3): 403–410. doi:10.1016/S0022-2836(05)80360-2. PMID 2231712., in which the nucleic acid and protein homology search algorithm known as BLAST was originally described.