Microbiology

About Microbiology

Overview

Microbiology is one of the oldest continuously published general microbiology journals in the world. Published monthly by the Microbiology Society — a UK-based not-for-profit learned society — it is the Society's founding journal, with a publishing record that stretches back to 1947. The journal covers the full breadth of microbiology, from microbial biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, developmental biology and physiology to pathogenicity, biodiversity, biotechnology, evolution and genetics of microorganisms and their viruses, as well as plant–microbe interactions and environmental and theoretical microbiology.

Over nearly eight decades the journal has earned a reputation as a dependable home for rigorous, peer-reviewed primary research and reviews. It is identified by print ISSN 1350-0872 and online ISSN 1465-2080 (CODEN MIBLAO) and is indexed in the major citation databases including Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded) and Scopus, as well as MEDLINE/PubMed. With thousands of published papers and hundreds of thousands of citations on record — OpenAlex counts 13,683 works and more than 701,000 citations — Microbiology remains a core journal for authors who want their work in front of the global microbiology community.

The Publisher: The Microbiology Society

Microbiology is published by the Microbiology Society, a UK-based not-for-profit learned society with a worldwide membership drawn from universities, industry, hospitals, research institutes and schools. Founded in 1945 as the Society for General Microbiology with Alexander Fleming as its first president, the Society today represents around 7,000 microbiologists. Its headquarters are at 14–16 Meredith Street, London, and its president is Professor Gordon Dougan CBE FRS.

As a learned society rather than a commercial publisher, the Society reinvests publishing income in the community it serves: conferences, grants, public engagement and policy work. Its journal portfolio has grown from the single founding title into a family that includes the Journal of General Virology (established 1967), the Journal of Medical Microbiology, the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology and the fully open-access Microbial Genomics and Access Microbiology titles. Authors choosing Microbiology are therefore supporting a community-owned publishing model rather than a commercial shareholder structure — a point the Society itself emphasises in its author communications.

History and Founding

The story of Microbiology begins with the Society for General Microbiology, founded on 16 February 1945 with Alexander Fleming as its first president. The Society held its first academic meeting in July 1945, and in January 1947 it launched its first journal, the Journal of General Microbiology. The fledgling journal was a statement of intent: a national society creating a permanent, high-quality outlet for fundamental research on microbes at a time when antibiotics, fermentation and industrial microbiology were transforming science and society.

The Journal of General Microbiology published under that title for nearly five decades. In 1994 the title was shortened to Microbiology, reflecting the journal's evolution from a society newsletter-style outlet into an international, broad-scope journal covering every corner of the field. The Society itself followed suit two decades later: in 2015, after a vote of its members, the Society for General Microbiology became the Microbiology Society, keeping its mission while modernising its identity.

Editorial leadership has passed through many distinguished hands. The microbiologist and science writer Sir John Postgate FRS edited the journal from 1969 to 1974. More recently, Tanya Parish of Seattle Children's Research Institute served as editor-in-chief from 2015, and since 2020 the editor-in-chief has been Gavin H. Thomas of the University of York.

The journal's longevity gives it an unusually deep archive: every volume since 1947 is available digitally, making Microbiology (and its predecessor title) one of the richest single records of how the science of microbiology has developed — from the antibiotic era and the dawn of molecular biology through the genomics revolution to today's microbiome and synthetic-biology age. Historians of science, as well as working researchers, mine this archive for the evolution of ideas such as bacterial chemotaxis, nitrogen fixation, biofilm biology and CRISPR immunity.

Article Formats and Thematic Collections

Beyond standard research articles and reviews, Microbiology publishes shorter formats including Commentaries and Letters, and runs curated collections that gather articles around important themes. Two of the most distinctive formats are Microbe Profiles — concise, accessible introductions to individual microbial species aimed at students and non-specialists — and Microbial Primers, which explain key concepts and methods in plain language. These formats are widely used in teaching and are among the journal's most-read content types.

Other active collections include Microbial Evolution, Bacterial Cell Envelopes, Antimicrobial Efflux, Bacterial Competitive Mechanisms and Advances in the Biology of Actinomycetes. For authors, contributing to a collection is a way to place work in a high-visibility context; for readers, collections offer a guided entry point into fast-moving subfields.

Aims and Scope

As described on the journal's official site at microbiologyresearch.org, Microbiology "brings together communities of scientists from all microbiological disciplines and from around the world," publishing fundamental and applied research across the breadth of the field. The stated scope explicitly welcomes work addressing current global challenges such as food security, environmental sustainability and health.

Topics within scope include:

• Microbial biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, developmental biology and physiology
• Pathogenicity, host–microbe interactions and virulence mechanisms
• Biodiversity, taxonomy, evolution and genetics of microorganisms and their viruses
• Biotechnology and applied microbiology
• Plant–microbe interactions
• Environmental and theoretical microbiology

The journal also curates themed collections — recent examples include Microbe Profiles, Microbial Primers, Microbial Evolution, Bacterial Cell Envelopes, Antimicrobial Efflux, Bacterial Competitive Mechanisms and Advances in the Biology of Actinomycetes — which gather review and primary articles around important or fast-moving topics.

Editorial Leadership

Gavin H. Thomas (University of York, UK) has been editor-in-chief since 2020. His research focuses on bacterial membrane transport and metabolism, and he leads the journal's editorial board of working scientists drawn from across microbiological disciplines. He succeeded Tanya Parish (Seattle Children's Research Institute, USA), who served as editor-in-chief from 2015 to 2020 and is noted for her work on tuberculosis drug discovery. Earlier in the journal's history, Sir John Postgate FRS — remembered for his research on nitrogen fixation and his celebrated science writing — was editor from 1969 to 1974. Individual article acceptance decisions are handled by a large board of editors with expertise spanning bacteriology, virology, mycology, microbial ecology, pathogenesis and biotechnology.

Journal Metrics

Because the Journal Citation Reports are subscription products, the exact current Journal Impact Factor should be confirmed in the latest Clarivate release; the figures below are attributed to the sources and years noted:

• Journal Impact Factor: 2.8 (2022, reported by Wikipedia citing the Journal Citation Reports). Third-party tracker Resurchify reports a Scopus-based impact score of 3.37 for 2024 (computed in 2025), up sharply on the preceding year.
• h-index: 256 (OpenAlex, calculated across the journal's full publication history, 2026); Resurchify reports 208 (Scopus-based, 2025).
• SJR (SCImago Journal Rank): 0.953, quartile Q2 in Microbiology (Resurchify, Scopus-based).
• CiteScore/SNIP: third-party estimates vary; Resurchify lists SNIP 0.6.
• Publication volume and citations: OpenAlex records 13,683 works from the journal with more than 701,000 citations (accessed October 2026), and a two-year mean citedness of 3.03.

The journal publishes monthly and is indexed in Web of Science (SCIE), Scopus, MEDLINE/PubMed, BIOSIS Previews and other major databases, so its content is widely discoverable by researchers and clinicians.

Open Access and Article Processing Charges

The Microbiology Society operates a hybrid publishing model with strong support for open access. Key facts from the Society's official open-access costs page (2026 rates):

• Gold open access APCs for Microbiology: £2,203 (Tier 1, covering original research articles and reviews) or £1,311 (Tier 2, covering Commentary and Letter article types) — 2026 rates, payable only by authors not covered by an institutional agreement.
• 30% discount on the APC for corresponding authors who are Microbiology Society members.
• Publish and Read agreements: authors at participating institutions worldwide can publish open access at no author-facing cost; the Society describes this as "uncapped Open Access publishing" with unlimited read access to the archive back to 1947.
• Equity waivers: an agreement with EIFL provides fee-free open access publishing in all Society titles for researchers across 33 developing and transition economy countries and territories (from January 2025).

Articles are published under open licenses such as CC-BY when the author selects gold open access. Society membership, which costs far less than a single APC, is the most economical route for regular contributors.

Indexing and Abstracting

Microbiology is abstracted and indexed in the databases that matter for visibility and evaluation:

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

Full-text content is hosted on the Society's journal platform (microbiologyresearch.org), with the complete archive stretching back to the first Journal of General Microbiology volumes of 1947.

Landmark Papers

Every DOI below was verified to resolve (HTTP 200) via doi.org or the Crossref API in October 2026. Citation counts are from OpenAlex at the time of writing.

1. COMSTAT: quantifying biofilm structures — Heydorn et al. (2000)

doi:10.1099/00221287-146-10-2395 — Heydorn, Nielsen, Hentzer and colleagues introduced COMSTAT, a computer program that quantified three-dimensional biofilm structures from confocal laser scanning microscopy image stacks. Biofilms were notoriously hard to compare across studies; COMSTAT gave the field its first standardised, quantitative vocabulary for biofilm architecture. With more than 2,100 citations, it is among the most-cited papers the journal has ever published.

2. Measuring bacterial load by broad-range real-time PCR — Nadkarni et al. (2002)

doi:10.1099/00221287-148-1-257 — Nadkarni, Martin and Jacques described a real-time PCR method using a universal probe and primer set to determine bacterial load. The broad-range approach meant any bacterium could be detected and counted without prior knowledge of its identity, making the assay valuable in clinical diagnostics and environmental studies. It has accumulated more than 1,900 citations.

3. Biofilm exopolysaccharides: a strong and sticky framework — Sutherland (2001)

doi:10.1099/00221287-147-1-3 — Ian W. Sutherland's review of the exopolysaccharide matrix of biofilms became a foundational reference for biofilm biology, explaining how the sticky extracellular polymer framework gives biofilms their structure, persistence and resistance to antimicrobials. Cited more than 1,800 times.

4. CRISPR spacers have extrachromosomal origins — Bolotin et al. (2005)

doi:10.1099/mic.0.28048-0 — Bolotin, Quinquis, Sorokin and colleagues showed that the spacer sequences of CRISPR loci derive from extrachromosomal elements such as phages and plasmids. Published at the dawn of the CRISPR era, this paper provided key early evidence that CRISPR is a bacterial adaptive immune system — work that predates the gene-editing revolution it helped enable. More than 1,700 citations.

5. Short motif sequences determine CRISPR targets — Mojica et al. (2009)

doi:10.1099/mic.0.023960-0 — Francisco Mojica and colleagues demonstrated that short motif sequences flanking the protospacer — now known as PAMs (protospacer adjacent motifs) — determine the targets of the prokaryotic CRISPR defence system. This discovery is central to how CRISPR systems distinguish self from non-self, a concept critical to CRISPR-based genome editing. More than 1,500 citations.

6. CRISPR elements in Yersinia pestis acquire new repeats from phage DNA — Pourcel et al. (2005)

doi:10.1099/mic.0.27437-0 — Pourcel, Salvignol and Vergnaud showed that CRISPR loci in Yersinia pestis acquire new repeat-spacer units by preferentially taking up bacteriophage DNA. The work provided direct evidence of the dynamic, adaptive nature of CRISPR arrays in a major pathogen, cited more than 1,350 times.

7. Metals, minerals and microbes: geomicrobiology and bioremediation — Gadd (2009)

doi:10.1099/mic.0.037143-0 — Geoffrey Michael Gadd's comprehensive review of how microorganisms interact with metals and minerals, and how those interactions can be harnessed for bioremediation of contaminated environments, became a cornerstone reference for environmental microbiology and geomicrobiology, with over 2,000 citations.

8. Are dental diseases examples of ecological catastrophes? — Marsh (2003)

doi:10.1099/mic.0.26082-0 — Philip Marsh's influential paper reframed dental caries and periodontal disease not as simple infections but as ecological disturbances — shifts in the resident oral microbiota driven by changes in the local environment. The "ecological plaque hypothesis" has shaped preventive dentistry and oral microbiome research ever since, with more than 1,250 citations.

Publishing Guide

Article types: Microbiology publishes original research articles, reviews, and shorter formats such as Commentaries and Letters; full details of article types and the official submission checklist are on the journal's site (microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/micro).

How to submit: Manuscripts are submitted online through the Society's submission system. Authors are advised to consult the journal's submission checklist, which covers formatting, data availability, ethics statements and open-access options.

Peer review: Submissions are handled by academic editors — active researchers — and undergo single- or double-anonymised peer review per the Society's policy; check the current instructions for authors for the exact model.

What the editors look for: Work should advance fundamental or applied understanding across the breadth of microbiology. Papers connecting to the journal's priority themes — food security, environmental sustainability and health — and well-written reviews for the Microbe Profiles and Microbial Primers collections are particularly welcome.

Research integrity and data policy: Like all Microbiology Society journals, Microbiology requires authors to comply with ethical standards for human and animal research, to disclose conflicts of interest, and to make underlying data available in appropriate public repositories (for example, sequence data in the INSDC databases) with accession numbers cited in the paper. The Society is a member of COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) and follows its guidance on authorship, plagiarism and corrections.

Open access choice: Authors can publish gold open access (APC £2,203 for research articles in 2026, with a 30% Society-member discount) or at no cost if covered by their institution's Publish and Read agreement; waiver programmes cover authors in 33 EIFL countries and territories.

Acceptance rate and decision times: The Society does not officially publish an acceptance rate for Microbiology; authors should not rely on third-party estimates. Decision times vary with reviewer availability.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Microbiology the same as the Journal of General Microbiology?

Yes. Microbiology is the current title; it was published as the Journal of General Microbiology from its founding in January 1947 until the rename in 1994. Older citations therefore appear under the former title.

Who publishes Microbiology?

The Microbiology Society, a UK-based not-for-profit learned society founded in 1945 (as the Society for General Microbiology). The journal is the Society's founding title.

What are the ISSNs of Microbiology?

Print ISSN 1350-0872, online ISSN 1465-2080, CODEN MIBLAO.

What is the impact factor of Microbiology?

The most recently verified figure widely cited is 2.8 (2022 Journal Citation Reports, reported by Wikipedia). A Scopus-based tracker (Resurchify) reports an impact score of 3.37 for 2024. Confirm the latest figure in the current Clarivate Journal Citation Reports.

Who is the editor-in-chief?

Gavin H. Thomas of the University of York has been editor-in-chief since 2020, succeeding Tanya Parish (2015–2020).

How much does it cost to publish open access in Microbiology?

The official 2026 gold open-access APC is £2,203 for research articles and reviews (Tier 1) and £1,311 for Commentaries and Letters (Tier 2), with a 30% discount for Microbiology Society members. Authors at institutions with a Publish and Read agreement, and authors in 33 EIFL countries, can publish open access with no APC.

Is the journal indexed in PubMed and Web of Science?

Yes — it is indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed, the Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science), Scopus, BIOSIS Previews and other major databases.

Where can I read the archive?

On the Society's journal platform at microbiologyresearch.org, with the archive extending back to the first Journal of General Microbiology volumes of 1947.

How should I cite older articles from this journal?

Articles published before 1994 appeared under the title Journal of General Microbiology; cite them under that title with the DOI as printed. The journal's recommended abbreviation changed with the title: J. Gen. Microbiol. for the older volumes, and the ISO 4 abbreviation Microbiology (Reading, Engl.) for the current title. When in doubt, follow the citation as given by the publisher or Crossref metadata for the specific DOI.