The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

About The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology — Profile and Guide

The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (commonly abbreviated J. Steroid Biochem. Mol. Biol., and shortened by its publisher to JSBMB) is an English-language, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Elsevier, devoted to experimental and theoretical work on steroids, sterols, hopanoids, vitamin D and related lipids. Its print ISSN is 0960-0760 and its online ISSN is 1879-1220. Founded in 1969 as the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry, it took its present, expanded title in 1990, when the molecular-biology revolution in hormone research made the old title too narrow for what the journal actually published. It appears monthly, is edited by Jerzy Adamski of Helmholtz Zentrum München as editor-in-chief (as listed on the publisher's journal pages), and is indexed in Scopus, Medline and the Science Citation Index Expanded, according to Elsevier's ScienceDirect journal insights page. For more than half a century it has been the specialist home journal of the steroid research community: the place where enzymologists who purify steroid-converting enzymes, molecular biologists who clone and characterise steroid receptors, and clinicians who measure steroids in patients have met in one literature.

At a Glance

• Full title: The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• Former title: Journal of Steroid Biochemistry (1969–1989)
• Publisher: Elsevier (Elsevier Ltd / Pergamon imprint historically)
• ISSN: 0960-0760 (print); 1879-1220 (online)
• Editor-in-chief: Jerzy Adamski, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany (as listed by ScienceDirect)
• Frequency: Monthly
• Language: English
• Subject areas (publisher): Biochemistry, Endocrinology, Molecular Biology
• Publisher-listed metrics (ScienceDirect insights): CiteScore 6.0; Impact Factor 2.5; open-access article publishing charge USD 3,780
• Publisher-listed timelines: 4 days submission to first decision; 39 days to decision after review; 81 days to acceptance; 2 days acceptance to online publication
• Indexing (publisher-listed): Scopus, Medline, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), with SCImago Journal Rank and SNIP among its displayed metrics
• OpenAlex record: source S168421034; 8,430 works, 306,687 citations, h-index 188 (OpenAlex, consulted for this profile)

History: A Journal That Grew With Its Field

To understand this journal, start with the science it was founded to serve. Steroid biochemistry in the 1960s was moving from classical organ physiology to chemistry and enzymology: the pathways by which cholesterol is converted into steroid hormones — glucocorticoids, mineralocorticoids, androgens, oestrogens and progestogens — were being mapped enzyme by enzyme, and the first modern assays were making it possible to measure these potent molecules at physiological concentrations. A community that had previously scattered its papers across general biochemistry, endocrinology and pharmacology journals acquired, in 1969, a journal of its own: the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry, published in the Pergamon tradition that later became part of Elsevier. Through the 1970s and 1980s the journal carried the field's working literature — steroid synthesis and metabolism, hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases, aromatase and the cytochrome P450 enzymes of steroidogenesis, steroid transport and binding proteins, and the clinical chemistry of steroid measurement.

The renaming of 1990 was a diagnosis as much as a title change. In the late 1980s the steroid field was transformed by molecular cloning: the receptors for glucocorticoids, oestrogens, progesterone and other steroids were cloned in quick succession, revealing a whole superfamily of nuclear receptors that act as ligand-controlled transcription factors, and steroid research suddenly belonged as much to molecular and cell biology as to classical biochemistry. By adding "and Molecular Biology" to its title, the journal declared that its scope had followed its authors. The combined title has now been in use for more than three decades — longer than the original title it replaced — and the journal's citation record reflects the enlarged field: OpenAlex associates its output above all with oestrogen and hormone effects, vitamin D research, steroid chemistry and biochemistry, adrenal hormones and disorders, and prostate cancer treatment and research.

The journal's longevity gives it a particular archival value. Its backfile is, in effect, a continuous record of how steroid science changed its methods: from extraction and colorimetric assay, through radioimmunoassay and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, to recombinant enzymes, transfected reporter systems, knockout models, genomics and today's mass-spectrometry-based steroid profiling. Researchers tracing the first characterisation of an enzyme, the first report of a receptor variant, or the early pharmacology of an aromatase inhibitor or a steroidogenesis blocker will repeatedly find themselves in this journal's 1970s, 1980s and 1990s volumes. That is the concrete meaning of its OpenAlex h-index of 188 and its more than 300,000 recorded citations: a deep back catalogue that the field still uses.

Scope: What the Journal Publishes, in Detail

Elsevier's statement of aims and scope describes a journal "devoted to experimental and theoretical developments in areas related to steroids, sterols, hopanoids, vitamin D and lipids", with an explicit interest in functional analyses of signal-transduction pathways and in the molecular impact of these compounds. Unpacked, that scope covers a recognisable set of research territories. First, steroid synthesis, metabolism and enzymology: the biosynthetic pathways from cholesterol onward, the enzymes that activate and inactivate steroid hormones in target tissues — including the intracrine production of active androgens and oestrogens inside peripheral tissues — and the inherited and acquired disorders of those pathways. Second, steroid receptors and signalling: the nuclear receptor superfamily (oestrogen, androgen, progesterone, glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors and their relatives), co-regulators, genomic and rapid non-genomic signalling, and receptor pharmacology in health and disease. Third, vitamin D biology, a territory the journal has carried for decades: vitamin D metabolism, the vitamin D receptor, and vitamin D's actions in bone, immunity, cancer and beyond. Fourth, sterols, hopanoids and lipids in so far as they connect to that core: cholesterol and oxysterol biology, bile-acid signalling, and the lipid chemistry of steroid-producing tissues.

Clinically, the journal's centre of gravity sits where steroid biology meets disease: hormone-dependent cancers (breast and prostate above all, where aromatase inhibitors, anti-androgens and steroid-synthesis blockers are standard therapies and where resistance mechanisms are an abiding theme), adrenal and gonadal disorders, disorders of sex development, metabolic disease, and reproductive endocrinology. Work on steroid measurement — the analytical chemistry on which all of the above depends, increasingly by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry — is also squarely in scope, as are neurosteroids and the actions of steroids in the brain. The formats the publisher lists are the classic ones for a journal of this type: original research articles, general and focused reviews, and rapid communications for brief findings of particular interest and clear novelty, together with special issues on cutting-edge topics, managed by guest editors and mixing commissioned reviews with invited original research, all subject to the journal's peer review.

Equally useful is what the scope excludes. JSBMB is not a clinical-practice journal: case reports and treatment series without a biochemical or molecular mechanism belong elsewhere. It is not a general endocrinology journal either — thyroid, pituitary and diabetes work without a steroid, vitamin D, sterol or lipid core will be redirected. And purely descriptive studies that report an association without functional follow-through sit badly with the stated interest in functional analysis; the publisher's guidance to authors in recent years has been explicit that association studies without mechanistic explanation, inadequately characterised reagents, or work resting on technical rather than biological replicates face rejection. Authors should read that as the journal's quality line: steroid measurements must be validated, cell and reagent identities documented, and statistics appropriate to the design.

Editorial Leadership and Peer Review

The editor-in-chief listed on the publisher's pages is Jerzy Adamski of Helmholtz Zentrum München, whose own research field — molecular endocrinology and metabolism, including hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases and steroid-related disease — sits at the journal's core. Day-to-day handling is shared with an editorial board of specialists across the journal's territories, and special issues are run by guest editors drawn from the community, a model the journal has used to consolidate emerging subfields (historically, for example, the proceedings and review collections arising from the international steroid research community's meetings and workshops). Peer review is conventional single-anonymised Elsevier practice conducted through the publisher's submission system: manuscripts are screened editorially, sent to independent referees, and decided on the referees' advice and the handling editor's judgement. The timelines Elsevier publishes for the journal — a median pattern of 4 days to first decision, 39 days to decision after review and 81 days to acceptance, with accepted articles appearing online within about 2 days — indicate an actively managed pipeline; they are publisher-reported figures, quoted here as such, and individual manuscripts will vary around them, particularly where referees must be replaced or revisions are extensive.

Metrics, Indexing and Standing — Read Carefully

Several different numbers circulate for this journal, and a responsible profile must separate them by source and year instead of blending them. The publisher's own ScienceDirect insights page, consulted for this profile, lists a CiteScore of 6.0 and an Impact Factor of 2.5, and displays SCImago Journal Rank and SNIP among the journal's metrics. Secondary aggregators report figures from other years — values such as a CiteScore in the 4.8–8.8 range and impact factors between roughly 2.5 and 3.8 appear in the secondary literature for various recent years, and the journal's 2018 Journal Citation Reports impact factor was 3.785 — which is exactly why this profile attributes every figure to its source rather than presenting one number as timeless truth. Journal metrics are recomputed annually; before citing one in a grant application, tenure file or journal-comparison table, read the current value from the publisher's insights page or from Journal Citation Reports itself.

What can be said stably is the journal's position rather than any single decimal. In the SCImago classification as reported by secondary sources, the journal sits in the second quartile (Q2) across its main categories — biochemistry, clinical biochemistry, endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, and molecular medicine — with third-quartile placements in some cell and molecular biology categories; quartile assignments also move year to year and should be verified for the year that matters to you. Its OpenAlex indicators (h-index 188; i10-index 5,676; two-year mean citedness about 3.6) depict what the quartile data also suggest: a solid, specialist, mid-to-upper-tier journal — not a generalist flagship, but one of the established title-level venues of its discipline, whose papers are heavily cited within steroid and endocrine research. Indexing, as listed by the publisher, covers Scopus, Medline and the Science Citation Index Expanded, so its content is visible in Scopus, PubMed/MEDLINE and Web of Science — the three channels through which most institutional readers will find it.

Publishing Model, Charges and Access

The journal operates Elsevier's standard hybrid model, and the publisher's terms are clear enough to state exactly. Under the subscription route, no publication fee is charged to authors, and published articles are immediately available to subscribers. Under the open-access route, the author (or their funder or institution) pays an article publishing charge listed by the publisher at USD 3,780 excluding taxes, with the amount potentially reduced during submission where a waiver, discount or institutional agreement applies — many universities hold read-and-publish agreements with Elsevier that cover or reduce this charge, and authors should check their institution's agreement before assuming they must pay personally. Copyright and licensing follow the route chosen: subscription articles on Elsevier's standard terms, open-access articles under the Creative Commons licence selected at acceptance. The journal is not a fully open-access (gold) title and is not listed in DOAJ; its open-access content is article-level, within a subscription journal. Preprint and self-archiving practice follows Elsevier's general policies for this journal; authors with funder mandates (for example, immediate open-access requirements) should confirm compliance with the publisher before submission rather than after acceptance.

How to Publish Here: A Practical Guide

Prospective authors should begin with fit, because the commonest failure at specialist journals is a competent paper sent to the wrong community. Ask whether a steroid, sterol, hopanoid, vitamin D or closely related lipid mechanism is the centre of the work — not a side measurement — and whether the readership that will cite it reads this journal. Manuscripts are submitted through Elsevier's online submission system for the journal (reached from its ScienceDirect homepage); the stored link in some older directory records points to the publisher's former journal-list address and should be replaced by the current ScienceDirect journal page. Prepare the manuscript to the journal's Guide for Authors: a structured presentation appropriate to an experimental paper, full methodological detail for steroid assays (extraction, chromatography, mass-spectrometry parameters, validation and quality control), unambiguous identification of cell lines, antibodies and other reagents, statistics based on biological replicates, and data presentation that lets a specialist repeat the experiment. Reviews are generally commissioned or proposed; authors planning a review should approach the editor with a synopsis first. For special issues, respond to the specific call and guest editor rather than the general pipeline. After submission, the publisher's reported pattern (first decision in days, post-review decision in roughly five to six weeks) means authors should have revision capacity ready; a fast journal punishes slow revisions by letting the literature move on.

For readers and librarians, the access picture is simple: institutional ScienceDirect subscriptions cover the journal for most research-active institutions, the subscription backfile reaches back to the journal's Pergamon-era volumes, and individual open-access articles are free to all. When citing, use the standard abbreviation J. Steroid Biochem. Mol. Biol., and when searching the older literature remember the title change: work published before 1990 appears under Journal of Steroid Biochemistry, and citation databases generally link the two title forms under the print ISSN lineage headed by 0960-0760.

Two further features of the journal deserve record because they shape how its literature should be searched and read. The first is the special issue. Alongside its regular monthly flow, the journal has long published guest-edited special issues that gather a subfield at a moment — a conference's matured proceedings, a receptor family's anniversary reassessment, a method's arrival. For the historian of the field these issues are landmarks: they show what the community thought was settled, and what it thought was next, at a datable point. For the working scientist they remain efficient entry points, since a good special issue mixes the commissioned reviews a newcomer needs with the primary papers that anchor them. The second feature is the journal's position between disciplines. A steroid paper may be, at once, chemistry (a synthesis or an assay), biology (a receptor mechanism) and medicine (a hormone-dependent cancer), and this journal is one of the few venues where all three readerships are assumed simultaneously. That interdisciplinarity explains both its breadth of citation and a practical warning for authors: a manuscript written for only one of those audiences — the pure chemist's or the pure clinician's — will be asked to speak to the others before it is accepted.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the journal's ISSNs?
Print ISSN 0960-0760; online ISSN 1879-1220.

When was it founded, and under what name?
In 1969, as the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry; it adopted its present title in 1990.

Who is the editor-in-chief?
Jerzy Adamski (Helmholtz Zentrum München), as listed on the publisher's journal pages.

What metrics does the publisher list?
CiteScore 6.0 and Impact Factor 2.5 on the ScienceDirect insights page consulted for this profile; figures from other years differ, so verify the current values before citing them.

What does open access cost?
The publisher lists an article publishing charge of USD 3,780 excluding taxes for the open-access route; the subscription route carries no author fee. Institutional agreements may reduce or cover the charge.

Where is it indexed?
Scopus, Medline and the Science Citation Index Expanded, as listed by the publisher.

Is it a monthly journal?
Yes — it publishes monthly in English.

Sources and Verification Note

This profile is anchored to the directory record's own identifiers (ISSN 0960-0760 and 1879-1220, publisher Elsevier BV) and built from Elsevier's ScienceDirect journal insights page for the journal (aims and scope wording, ISSNs, subject areas, CiteScore and Impact Factor as listed there, the USD 3,780 article publishing charge, publishing timelines, the indexing list and the editor-in-chief's name and affiliation), from the journal's documented title history (founded 1969 as Journal of Steroid Biochemistry; present title from 1990), from SCImago-derived secondary reporting for quartile placement (attributed in the text as secondary and year-dependent), and from the OpenAlex source record S168421034 for works, citations and h-index. Where sources disagreed — notably on CiteScore and impact-factor values across years — the profile reports the publisher's current listed figures and says so, rather than averaging or inventing. Charges, editors and metrics change; confirm them on the journal's ScienceDirect page before submitting or paying anything.