Philippine Journal of Science

About Philippine Journal of Science

The Philippine Journal of Science: Journal Profile

The Philippine Journal of Science (abbreviated Philipp. J. Sci., and universally known in the Philippines as PJS) is the flagship multidisciplinary science journal of the Philippine government. It is published by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and managed by the DOST's Science and Technology Information Institute (STII). Its print ISSN is 0031-7683. The Department describes it as the oldest peer-reviewed scientific journal in the Philippines, with a first issue in 1906, and the journal today operates as an open-access, single-blind peer-reviewed title covering the natural sciences, engineering, mathematics, and the social sciences. In 2026 the journal reached volume 155 — a volume count that, even allowing for the interruptions of a long twentieth century, testifies to more than a hundred years of continuous scientific record for the archipelago.

This profile explains where PJS came from, what it publishes now, how its editorial and publication model works, what its indexing and citation metrics do and do not show, how authors should approach it, and how readers can use its deep archive. It is written from the journal's official site and DOST materials, from Scopus-derived bibliometric listings, and from the scholarly literature on Philippine scientific publishing. Where a fact could not be verified from those sources, it is flagged as not publicly disclosed instead of being guessed.

At a Glance

History: From the Bureau of Science to the DOST

PJS was established in 1906 by the Bureau of Science in Manila, the research bureau of the American-era insular government and the institutional ancestor of today's DOST system. The Bureau was the Philippines' primary research centre until the Second World War: its laboratories worked on the problems of a tropical archipelago — infectious diseases such as leprosy, tuberculosis, cholera, dengue, malaria and beriberi, alongside botany, zoology, geology, fisheries, and the chemistry of Philippine natural products — and the journal was the channel through which that laboratory work reached the scientific world. Publishing the research done in local laboratories, and reporting global scientific developments of relevance to Philippine society, was the journal's founding double mission, and the balance between international science and Philippine problems still defines its contents page.

The institutional line from the Bureau to the present is direct even though the parent organisation was repeatedly reorganised — through the post-war Institute of Science and Technology, the National Science Development Board era, the National Science and Technology Authority, and finally the Department of Science and Technology, with the journal's management settling at the Science and Technology Information Institute. A widely cited stock-taking of Philippine scientific journals (Tecson-Mendoza, Science Editing, 2015) counted PJS at 108 years in publication and the country's oldest scientific journal, published by a government institution in a landscape where most other leading titles belong to universities or professional societies. The DOST itself repeats the distinction: PJS is “the oldest peer-reviewed scientific journal in the Philippines with its first issue published in 1906”, published bimonthly under STII management.

Volume numbering tells the same story arithmetically. Volume 150 appeared in 2021 — its December issue 6A alone ran to hundreds of pages of microbiology, food science, and natural products research — and volume 155 is appearing through 2026. A journal does not accumulate 155 volumes by accident; it does so because successive Philippine administrations have treated a national science journal as infrastructure, worth funding through war, reconstruction, and repeated departmental reorganisation. For historians of science, the back run is a primary source for the development of research in Southeast Asia; for working scientists, it is the longest continuous record of Philippine field and laboratory results in existence.

Scope and Contents: What PJS Publishes Today

The journal's own description, carried on its official site and repeated in international research-information services, defines PJS as “an open-access, single-blind peer-reviewed journal on natural sciences, engineering, mathematics, and social sciences”. Bibliometric services classify it as Multidisciplinary, with an additional SCImago category of Social Sciences (miscellaneous). That breadth is genuine rather than rhetorical. The 2026 issues alone — the best snapshot of current editorial appetite — contain:

• Agriculture and forestry. The February 2026 issue (Vol. 155 No. 1) leads with work on the anaerobic germination tolerance trait of Philippine rice elite lines and varieties for direct seeding, and on the partial replacement of fishmeal with hot-water-treated ingredients in aquaculture feeds — applied research aimed squarely at Philippine food production.
• Marine and fisheries science. The same issue's cover story reports the morphological and histological identification of three neritic tuna species from more than 1,000 samples collected in the southern Philippines in 2021–2022, microscopy revealing six phases of sperm formation — taxonomy in the service of a nationally vital fishery.
• Biodiversity and entomology. The June 2026 issue (Vol. 155 No. 3) features butterfly specimens from Barangay Mabini in Tubajon, Dinagat Islands — 26 documented species, 10 of them insular endemics, with Nymphalidae predominating — and the April issue (Vol. 155 No. 2) reports the detection of deformed wing virus in adult bees and mites in a Philippine apiary, a finding with direct consequences for pollinator health and honey production.
• Biotechnology and biosafety. A special issue (Vol. 154 No. S1) is devoted to biosafety and biotechnology research, framing biotechnology across agriculture, health, and environmental science within the Philippine regulatory and socio-economic setting.

Older content shows the same spread at greater depth: bacteriophage therapy against drug-resistant pathogens, ant-associated bacterial communities in the Makiling Forest Reserve measured by 16S rRNA metagenomics, cross-species amplification of timber-tree microsatellite markers, food composition and nutrition studies from the DOST's own institutes, and natural-products chemistry of Philippine medicinal plants such as Vitex negundo (lagundi). A substantial share of the authorship comes from the DOST's own research institutes — the Food and Nutrition Research Institute, the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, and the Forest Products Research and Development Institute all appear in the Department's award records for PJS articles — alongside Philippine universities and, increasingly, international collaborators. The journal is therefore best understood as the national platform for Philippine science in the broad sense: work done in the Philippines, on Philippine materials and problems, or by Philippine scientists, offered to a world readership without a paywall.

Editorial Model, Peer Review and Publication Pattern

PJS is a government-published journal, and its editorial economy follows from that. It is published by the DOST and managed day-to-day by STII, the Department's information institute, whose building in the DOST Complex at Bicutan, Taguig houses the journal operation. Peer review is single-blind: reviewers know the authors' identities, while authors do not know the reviewers'. The journal is open access online through its official site, philjournalsci.dost.gov.ph, which carries current issues, accepted-article lists (the site was posting accepted articles for the February 2026 issue as of July 2026 announcements), cover stories for each number, and the archive. Articles carry DOIs under the prefix 10.56899 — for example, a 2021 PJS bacteriophage paper is registered as doi.org/10.56899/150.6A.03, the DOI itself encoding the volume-and-issue citation (150, issue 6A) in the traditional Philippine style.

The publication pattern is bimonthly: six regular numbers a year, as the February, April and June dates of volume 155's first three issues confirm, supplemented by special issues such as the biosafety and biotechnology supplement noted above and by lettered part-issues (the 6A pattern) when accepted material exceeds a regular number's capacity. Print continues alongside the online edition — the journal styles itself by its print ISSN and paginates in the conventional manner — but the online open-access edition is the version of record for most readers and the one libraries link to.

Two things prospective authors often want to know are not stated in the public materials consulted for this profile, and honesty requires naming them. First, article processing charges: PJS's open access is publicly funded through the DOST rather than marketed as an author-pays product, but no current fee schedule — whether a charge exists, and if so its amount — is published in the sources consulted, so authors should confirm the position on the official site or with the STII editorial office before submitting. Second, turnaround statistics and acceptance rates are not publicly disclosed. Bimonthly publication with visible accepted-article lists suggests an active pipeline, but no verified median review time can be quoted, and any website claiming one for PJS should be treated with caution.

Indexing and Citation Metrics — Read Carefully, With Dates

PJS is indexed in Scopus. Scopus-derived listings record coverage years of 1979, 1982, 1986–1988, and 2009 to the present — the gaps are a matter of database coverage history, not of the journal's existence, since the journal demonstrably published through those decades. Current Scopus/SCImago-based figures reported by bibliometric services include a CiteScore of 1.6, a SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) of 0.214, an h-index of 27, and a best quartile of Q3 in both Multidisciplinary and Social Sciences (miscellaneous). Those values move every year and differ slightly between services that snapshot the data at different times; the figures above are the values reported in the listings consulted in 2026 and should be re-checked on SCImago or Scopus itself before being quoted in a formal document. The Journals World catalogue record for the journal's twin listing likewise reports h-index 27, which is consistent with the SCImago figure.

How should a researcher interpret a Q3 multidisciplinary profile? PJS competes, in the multidisciplinary category, against general-science titles from every country, including some of the largest journals in the world; a mid-table position for a national journal publishing heavily applied, locally grounded work is the expected pattern rather than a mark of failure. The journal's real scholarly function — making Philippine results findable, citable, and permanent — is exactly the function that raw citation averages undervalue, because work on Dinagat butterflies, Philippine tuna stocks, or local rice varieties accumulates citations slowly and within a specialist community. Authors should weigh discoverability and audience fit ahead of quartile arithmetic: a paper on a Philippine endemic species will be read and used by precisely the community that needs it if it appears in PJS, and the open-access model means no reader anywhere is stopped by a paywall. For institutional reporting, the verifiable claims are the safe ones: Scopus indexing, the ISSN, the DOST publisher, and the journal's age. Claims about a Journal Impact Factor should not be made for PJS unless Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports itself is consulted and quoted with its year, since the listings consulted for this profile attribute no such factor to the title.

Guidance for Authors

Submissions are made through the journal's official website, and the Instructions to Authors published there govern format, article structure, and reference style; those instructions, not any third-party summary, are authoritative. Within that frame, the journal's published record supports the following practical guidance:

• Originality and significance. PJS publishes original research that adds new information of significance, in the conventional structure of a full research article, together with shorter findings and review material as the editorial office directs. Work that merely repeats established results on non-Philippine material, without a reason for a Philippine or regional readership to care, is a weak fit.
• Philippine and regional relevance is an asset, not a limitation. Studies of Philippine species, waters, soils, foods, diseases, and technologies are the journal's core. International authors with genuinely comparative or archipelago-relevant work are published, but the connection should be explicit in the introduction.
• Methods must be reproducible. The journal's strong suits — taxonomy, fisheries biology, food and nutrition science, biotechnology — are measurement sciences. Voucher specimens, sampling coordinates and dates, instrument and statistical detail, and ethics clearances for animal or human work should be reported completely enough for a DOST institute laboratory to repeat the study.
• Write for a multidisciplinary reader. A PJS issue places a tuna histology paper a few signatures away from a rice genetics paper. Introductions that explain why the problem matters, in plain terms, before the specialist detail begins, serve this audience — and the single-blind reviewers drawn from it — best.
• Confirm charges and timelines directly. Because fee and schedule information is not publicly disclosed in a durable public source, ask the editorial office at submission time and keep the answer with the manuscript record.

Authors should also note the national context: Philippine universities and the Commission on Higher Education have historically recognised and incentivised publication in internationally indexed Philippine journals, and the National Academy of Science and Technology has given outstanding-publication awards for papers in local journals — PJS articles by DOST institute researchers have repeatedly figured in the Department's International Publication Awards. For a Philippine-based researcher, a PJS paper therefore counts twice: once in the international index, and once in the national system that funds the work.

How to Read and Use PJS

Current issues, accepted-article lists, and the archive are freely available on the official site; no subscription or registration is needed to read. Citations follow the pattern Philippine Journal of Science volume (issue): pages, year — for example Philipp. J. Sci. 150 (3): 753–763, June 2021 — with the article DOI, where assigned, providing the permanent link. Librarians should note the title's stability: unlike many long-lived journals, PJS has carried the same title and the same print ISSN since the era of the Bureau of Science, so catalogue records are unusually clean, and Scopus coverage gaps should not be mistaken for title changes or cessations. Researchers tracing older work should remember that early volumes were produced by the Bureau of Science and are also encountered in the large digital libraries and in print sets held by Philippine and American research libraries, a legacy of the journal's origins in the insular government's scientific service.

One caution belongs in every profile of this title: the name is sometimes confused with other Philippine periodicals — the Philippine Scientific Journal (a medical title with a different ISSN), the Philippine Journal of Systematic Biology, and various university journals with similar names are different publications. The identifiers that fix PJS unambiguously are print ISSN 0031-7683, the DOST/STII publisher line, and the DOI prefix 10.56899.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ISSN of the Philippine Journal of Science?

Print ISSN 0031-7683. No separate online ISSN is listed in the ISSN-derived reference consulted for this profile; the online edition is identified by the journal's official DOST website and article DOIs.

Who publishes the Philippine Journal of Science?

The Department of Science and Technology of the Republic of the Philippines, with management by its Science and Technology Information Institute (STII) in Bicutan, Taguig. The journal was founded in 1906 by the Bureau of Science, the DOST system's ancestor.

Is the Philippine Journal of Science open access?

Yes. The journal describes itself as an open-access, single-blind peer-reviewed journal, and its issues are freely readable on its official site. Whether any author-side charge applies is not publicly disclosed in the sources consulted; confirm with the editorial office.

Is the Philippine Journal of Science indexed in Scopus?

Yes. Scopus-derived listings show coverage in 1979, 1982, 1986–1988, and from 2009 onward, with a best quartile of Q3 (Multidisciplinary; Social Sciences, miscellaneous), CiteScore 1.6, SJR 0.214, and h-index 27 in the listings consulted in 2026. Verify current values in Scopus or SCImago before formal use.

How often is it published?

Bimonthly — six regular issues a year — plus occasional special and supplementary issues. Volume 155's first three numbers are dated February, April, and June 2026.

What subjects does it cover?

The natural sciences, engineering, mathematics, and the social sciences, with visible strength in agriculture, fisheries and marine science, biodiversity, food and nutrition, and biotechnology — especially where the work concerns the Philippines.

Sources and Verification

This profile rests on the journal's official website (philjournalsci.dost.gov.ph) for its current volumes, issue dates, cover stories, and accepted-article practice; on Department of Science and Technology published material for the 1906 founding, the “oldest peer-reviewed scientific journal in the Philippines” description, bimonthly publication, and STII management; on the journal's description as an open-access, single-blind peer-reviewed title covering natural sciences, engineering, mathematics, and social sciences, as carried by international research-information services summarising the publisher's own text; on Scopus- and SCImago-derived listings for coverage years, CiteScore, SJR, quartile, and h-index, quoted with their 2026 consultation date; on Tecson-Mendoza's 2015 review of Philippine scientific journals in Science Editing for historical context and the journal's age and publisher type; and on published PJS articles themselves for DOI prefix and citation-pattern evidence. No acceptance rate, review-time figure, impact factor, or fee amount is asserted, because none could be verified from these sources.