Journal of Biological Chemistry

About Journal of Biological Chemistry

About the Journal of Biological Chemistry

The Journal of Biological Chemistry (J. Biol. Chem., JBC) is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering biochemistry and molecular biology, published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). Established in 1905, it is one of the oldest continuously published journals in the molecular life sciences — and by several measures one of the most influential: its archive of more than 214,000 papers has accumulated over 17 million citations (OpenAlex, 2026), and it published what is widely regarded as the most cited scientific paper of all time.

Since January 2021, JBC has been a fully gold open-access journal: every article is published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND) and is freely available to all readers immediately upon publication, with in-press articles posted free on the journal website right after acceptance. As a society-owned journal, it is published on a not-for-profit basis, with revenue supporting ASBMB's scientific meetings, education programs, advocacy, and awards.

The journal is known for a distinctive editorial identity: a longstanding commitment to rigorous, mechanistic studies that deepen understanding of biological processes. In May 2026, Editor-in-Chief Alex Toker and Deputy Editor Henrik G. Dohlman announced an expansion of the journal's scope to reflect how discovery now happens — welcoming studies that deliver conceptual advances, enabling methods and resources, and rigorous large-scale or computational analyses, alongside the detailed mechanistic work that has always been JBC's hallmark. Authors value JBC for its society ownership, its transparent and constructive peer review, and the broad visibility that comes with publishing in one of the most read and cited journals in biochemistry.

History: 1905 to the Present

JBC was founded in 1905 by John Jacob Abel and Christian Archibald Herter, two pioneers of American biochemistry. Abel — the first professor of pharmacology in the United States (at Johns Hopkins) and a founder of the American Society of Biological Chemists, the forerunner of ASBMB — and Herter, a physician-scientist, created the journal to give the young science of biological chemistry a dedicated American venue. The first volumes appeared in 1905–1906, with Abel and Herter serving as the journal's first editors (1906–1909).

Since 1925, the journal has been published by ASBMB (and its predecessor societies), making the society–journal relationship one of the longest in scientific publishing — a full century. The early decades established JBC as the home of classical biochemistry: among the landmark papers of the 1920s is Cyrus Fiske and Yellapragada Subbarow's 1925 colorimetric method for phosphorus determination, a paper that went on to collect roughly 19,000 citations and remained a laboratory standard for generations.

The journal's editorial lineage reads like a history of twentieth-century biochemistry. After the founders came Alfred Newton Richards (1910–1914) and Donald D. Van Slyke (1914–1925), whose name remains attached to classic clinical-chemistry methods. Stanley R. Benedict edited the journal from 1925 to 1936, followed by Rudolph J. Anderson (1937–1958) and John T. Edsall (1958–1967) — Edsall being one of the founders of modern protein physical chemistry. William Howard Stein, who would share the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on ribonuclease, served as editor from 1968 to 1971.

The longest and most transformative editorship was that of Herbert Tabor, who led the journal from 1971 to 2011 — four decades during which JBC grew into one of the largest and most cited journals in all of science. Tabor's tenure saw the publication of era-defining methods papers: Oliver Lowry's 1951 protein assay (published before Tabor's tenure but emblematic of the journal) became the most cited paper in scientific history; and under Tabor's watch came Folch's lipid extraction method (1957), Weber and Osborn's SDS–PAGE molecular-weight method (1969), O'Farrell's two-dimensional electrophoresis (1975), and Grynkiewicz, Poenie, and Tsien's fluorescent calcium indicators (1985) — each collecting tens of thousands of citations.

After Tabor came Martha Fedor (2011–2015) and Lila Gierasch (2016–2021), who steered the journal through its historic transition to full open access in January 2021. The current editor-in-chief, Alex Toker, began a five-year term on October 1, 2021. In honor of Tabor's service, ASBMB and JBC established the JBC/Herbert Tabor Early Career Investigator Awards, recognizing outstanding first-author papers by early-career scientists.

Aims and Scope

JBC describes its mission as publishing rigorous, mechanistic studies that deepen understanding of biological processes. Following the May 2026 scope expansion articulated by Toker and Dohlman, the journal's criteria now explicitly embrace a broader range of discovery modes while holding fast to standards of rigor:

• Mechanistic insight — studies delivering detailed molecular or biochemical mechanisms remain the core of the journal.
• Conceptual advances — work that shifts how a biological problem is understood, even before full mechanistic resolution.
• Enabling methods and resources — new techniques, datasets, and tools that empower the community (a tradition stretching back to the Lowry assay).
• Integrative and large-scale analyses — computational, structural, and systems-level studies employing rigorous experimental design.

Across all categories, the journal prioritizes rigorous experimental design and analysis, clear alignment between data and conclusions, transparency, and reproducibility. Subject coverage spans the full breadth of biochemistry and molecular biology: protein structure and function, enzymology, signal transduction, membranes, metabolism, nucleic acids, gene expression, cell biology, and the molecular basis of disease.

JBC publishes Research Articles, Reviews (including minireviews), and Accelerated Communications-style rapid reports, along with editorials and special-topic collections. In-press ("Articles in Press") versions are posted free immediately after acceptance, so new findings reach the community without waiting for issue compilation.

Editorial Leadership

The current Editor-in-Chief is Dr. Alex Toker, Associate Director for the Cancer Research Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. His five-year term began October 1, 2021. Dr. Toker is an expert in the signaling mechanisms governing cancer progression; his laboratory focuses on the PI3K signaling pathway in breast and other cancers and on how the protein kinase AKT promotes tumor-cell survival, growth, and metabolic reprogramming. He has a long relationship with the journal, having served as an editorial board member, associate editor (since 2013), and deputy editor (since 2020) before his appointment, and previously chaired the editorial advisory board of ASBMB Today, the society's magazine.

He works alongside Deputy Editor Henrik G. Dohlman (University of North Carolina), with whom he co-authored the 2026 scope-expansion editorial, and a large board of associate editors covering the journal's subject areas. Past editors-in-chief include Herbert Tabor (1971–2011), whose decade-spanning leadership is commemorated in the JBC/Herbert Tabor awards; Lila Gierasch (2016–2021), who oversaw the open-access transition; and Martha Fedor (2011–2015).

Key Facts

Metrics

Journal metrics describe average citation performance and should be compared only within similar fields and time windows — particularly for a journal whose archive includes the most cited paper in history, which skews any average.

Journal Impact Factor (Clarivate, Journal Citation Reports). The 2021 JCR edition reported an impact factor of 5.486. More recent aggregator compilations place the 2024 figure at approximately 4.0–4.1 (figures vary by aggregator; e.g., ~4.1 in one ranking compilation, ~4.0 in another). Readers should treat aggregator IF figures as approximate and consult the Journal Citation Reports for the authoritative value.

CiteScore / SJR (Scopus-based). Aggregators report a CiteScore-derived "impact score" around 4.5 and an SJR around 1.64–1.81 (2024–2025 data), with the journal ranked Q1 in Biochemistry, Cell Biology, and Molecular Biology categories. Exact values differ between aggregators and editions.

Scale of the archive. OpenAlex records approximately 214,433 works published in JBC, with about 17.4 million citations collectively — among the largest citation totals of any journal in the life sciences.

H-index. Reported in the range of 567–578 depending on database and cutoff date (site records cite 578; aggregators cite ~567), reflecting more than a century of heavily cited publications.

Acceptance rate and review times. No official acceptance rate or median turnaround is published for this title; authors should not rely on third-party estimates.

Publishing Model and Article Processing Charges

Since January 2021, JBC has been a fully gold open-access journal: there is no subscription route, and every article is published under a Creative Commons license and made freely available immediately. To sustain this model, publication is supported by article publication charges (APCs) paid by authors, funders, or institutions.

ASBMB sets APC levels for its journals and offers mechanisms to reduce the burden: ASBMB members receive discounted APCs, and the society maintains waiver and discount programs for authors facing financial constraints. Institutional open-access agreements may also cover the fee. Because APC levels are revised periodically, authors should check the current charges on the official ASBMB/JBC author page before submitting rather than relying on any third-party figure. The journal's not-for-profit status means APC revenue supports the society's scientific mission rather than commercial shareholders.

Abstracting and Indexing

JBC is abstracted and indexed in the major scientific databases, including (compiled from secondary sources; confirm current coverage with your institution):

• Index Medicus / MEDLINE / PubMed
• Science Citation Index / Web of Science
• Scopus
• Current Contents / Life Sciences
• Biological Abstracts / BIOSIS Previews
• Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)
• Embase
• CAB Abstracts

Landmark Papers

JBC's archive contains an extraordinary concentration of the most cited papers in the history of science — particularly foundational methods papers that became universal laboratory tools. The six below are the journal's most cited works by OpenAlex count (October 2026). Each DOI was verified as resolving via the Crossref registry at the time of writing. Summaries are our own; citation counts are approximate and continue to grow.

1. Lowry, O. H., Rosebrough, N. J., Farr, A. L. & Randall, R. J. (1951). "Protein measurement with the Folin phenol reagent." J. Biol. Chem. 193: 265–275. DOI: 10.1016/S0021-9258(19)52451-6
The most cited scientific paper of all time, with more than 318,000 citations recorded by OpenAlex (over 350,000 in Web of Science). The Lowry assay — combining the biuret reaction with Folin–Ciocalteu phenol reagent for sensitive colorimetric protein quantification — became the default method for measuring protein concentration in virtually every biochemistry laboratory for half a century.

2. Folch, J., Lees, M. & Sloane Stanley, G. H. (1957). "A simple method for the isolation and purification of total lipides from animal tissues." J. Biol. Chem. 226: 497–509. DOI: 10.1016/S0021-9258(18)64849-5
Introduced the chloroform–methanol extraction procedure for total lipids from animal tissues — the "Folch extraction" — which remains the standard first step in lipid analysis. With roughly 65,000 citations, it is one of the most cited methods papers ever published.

3. Grynkiewicz, G., Poenie, M. & Tsien, R. Y. (1985). "A new generation of Ca²⁺ indicators with greatly improved fluorescence properties." J. Biol. Chem. 260: 3440–3450. DOI: 10.1016/S0021-9258(19)83641-4
Reported the fura-2 family of ratiometric fluorescent calcium indicators, which allowed quantitative imaging of intracellular calcium dynamics in living cells. Cited more than 21,000 times, it helped launch the modern era of calcium signaling research; co-author Roger Tsien later shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for green fluorescent protein.

4. Weber, K. & Osborn, M. (1969). "The reliability of molecular weight determinations by dodecyl sulfate–polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis." J. Biol. Chem. 244: 4406–4412. DOI: 10.1016/S0021-9258(18)94333-4
Demonstrated that SDS–PAGE could reliably estimate protein molecular weights, establishing the theoretical and practical basis for the technique that became the single most universal method in protein biochemistry. Cited more than 20,000 times.

5. O'Farrell, P. H. (1975). "High resolution two-dimensional electrophoresis of proteins." J. Biol. Chem. 250: 4007–4021. DOI: 10.1016/S0021-9258(19)41496-8
Combined isoelectric focusing with SDS–PAGE to resolve more than a thousand proteins on a single gel — the birth of proteomics as a discipline. With roughly 19,000 citations, it remained the flagship protein-separation technology for three decades.

6. Fiske, C. H. & Subbarow, Y. (1925). "The colorimetric determination of phosphorus." J. Biol. Chem. 66: 375–400. DOI: 10.1016/S0021-9258(18)84756-1
A foundational analytical method for phosphate determination that underpinned decades of work on energy metabolism, nucleotides, and phosphoproteins. With about 19,000 citations across a century, it exemplifies the journal's century-long tradition of publishing enduring methods.

How to Publish in the Journal of Biological Chemistry

Manuscripts are submitted through the journal's online submission system linked from the official JBC website (jbc.org). Guidance for prospective authors:

• Scope fit. JBC seeks rigorous studies that deepen understanding of biological processes — mechanistic work at its core, but since the 2026 scope expansion also conceptual advances, enabling methods and resources, and rigorous large-scale or computational studies. Purely descriptive or incremental work is unlikely to succeed.
• Lead with rigor. The journal's identity centers on rigorous experimental design, appropriate controls, quantitative analysis, and conclusions that align tightly with the data. Reviewers are instructed to weigh these heavily.
• Reproducibility and transparency. Detailed methods, data availability statements, and deposition of structural or omics data in public repositories are expected.
• Consider the format. Full research articles are the mainstay; reviews are often commissioned but proposals are welcome; rapid communications suit urgent findings.
• Plan for open access. As a gold-OA journal, an APC applies upon acceptance. Check ASBMB member discounts, institutional agreements, and waiver programs before submitting.
• Early-career visibility. Outstanding first-author papers may be nominated for the JBC/Herbert Tabor Early Career Investigator Awards — a distinction worth noting in cover letters for eligible work.
• Follow author guidelines. Formatting, reference style, figure preparation, and nomenclature standards are detailed on the JBC author-information pages and should be followed exactly.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ISSN of the Journal of Biological Chemistry?
Print ISSN 0021-9258 and online ISSN 1083-351X; CODEN JBCHA3.

Who publishes the Journal of Biological Chemistry?
The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), a not-for-profit scientific society, since 1925.

When was JBC founded?
1905, by John Jacob Abel and Christian Archibald Herter.

Who is the current editor-in-chief?
Dr. Alex Toker of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center / Harvard Medical School, serving a five-year term that began October 1, 2021.

What is the impact factor of JBC?
The 2021 Journal Impact Factor was 5.486; aggregator compilations place the 2024 figure around 4.0–4.1. See the Metrics section for detail and caveats.

Is JBC open access?
Yes — fully gold open access since January 2021, under Creative Commons licenses (CC BY / CC BY-NC-ND).

Does it cost anything to publish in JBC?
Yes — as a gold-OA journal it charges an article publication charge (APC), with discounts for ASBMB members and waiver programs; check the official site for current rates.

How often is JBC published?
Weekly.

What is the most cited paper ever published in JBC?
Lowry, Rosebrough, Farr & Randall (1951), "Protein measurement with the Folin phenol reagent" — the most cited scientific paper of all time, with over 300,000 citations.

Where do I submit a manuscript?
Through the online submission system linked from the official journal website.

Research-grade profile compiled October 2026 from official publisher sources.