Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C

About Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C

About Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C — A Journal of Biosciences

Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C, fully styled Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C — A Journal of Biosciences and usually shortened to ZNC, is a long-running peer-reviewed scientific journal published by De Gruyter (now presented on the publisher's platform as De Gruyter Brill) in Germany. It works on the boundary between chemistry and biology, and the publisher describes it as an international scientific journal and a community resource for the emerging field of natural and natural-like products. That short description captures the journal's present identity well: this is not a general biology journal in the broadest sense, and it is not a pure chemistry journal either. Its centre of gravity is the natural product — a compound produced by a living organism — and everything that follows from studying such compounds seriously: isolating them, working out their structures, synthesising them or producing them biochemically, testing what they do in biological systems, and using computation to predict their structure and function.

Readers who meet the journal for the first time sometimes find the title confusing, so it is worth unpacking. Zeitschrift für Naturforschung is German for “Journal for Nature Research”, and the letter C is not decorative. It marks the third section of a journal family founded in 1946. Section A covers the physical sciences, Section B covers chemical sciences, and Section C, separated out in 1973, covers the biosciences. All three sections share the same volume numbering in each calendar year, a quirk inherited from their common origin, which is why citations to the family can look unusual. A citation to ZNC will normally carry the year, the volume, the letter “c”, and the page range, and checking that letter matters, because the same volume number exists in Sections A and B with completely different contents.

History: From a 1946 Founding to a Biosciences Section in 1973

The history given on the publisher's own page is unusually specific, and it is the best place to start. Alfred Klemm, then working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry in Tailfingen, founded the Zeitschrift für Naturforschung together with Hans Friedrich-Freksa in 1946, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, when German science was rebuilding its institutions and its channels of communication. The original journal published research across chemistry, physics and the biosciences in a single title. That arrangement lasted only a year. In 1947 the journal was divided into two parts: one devoted to the physical sciences, which became Section A, and one covering the chemical and biological sciences including biophysics, which became Section B. The biosciences then separated in 1973, when Section C was established for the biological sciences, while Section B concentrated on chemistry. De Gruyter gives the first publication date of Section C as 20 February 1973, and bibliographic services record continuous coverage from 1973 to the present.

For most of its life the journal was published by its own house, the Verlag der Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, in Tübingen. The modern chapter begins in the mid-2010s: the journal has been published by Walter de Gruyter since 2015, and it now sits inside the De Gruyter Brill journal programme, with the production, hosting, marketing and open access machinery that a large commercial and academic publisher provides. That change of publisher did not change the journal's title, its section letter, its volume sequence or its subject identity, which is one reason its archive reads as a single continuous record from 1973 despite the change of ownership.

The history matters for a practical reason. Because all three sections of the family began with the 1946 volume and share volume numbers, a researcher tracing an old reference has to confirm the section letter before ordering a scan or following a link. It also matters for interpreting the ISSN record. The Journals World record for this post carries three ISSNs — 0341-0471, 0939-5075 and 1865-7125. OpenAlex lists exactly the same three numbers for this journal, with 0341-0471 as the linking ISSN, while the publisher's current page presents 0939-5075 as the print ISSN and 1865-7125 as the electronic ISSN. The honest reading of that evidence is that 0341-0471 is a legacy print ISSN that was superseded, not a sign that three different journals have been mixed together. Authors citing the journal today should use the current print or electronic ISSN that matches the version they consulted.

Scope: Natural Products on the Chemistry–Biology Boundary

The publisher's objective statement is precise about what ZNC wants. The journal publishes original research on the isolation (including structure elucidation), biochemical synthesis and bioactivities of natural products, together with their biochemistry, pharmacology and biotechnology, and innovative computational methods for predicting the structure and/or function of natural products. It welcomes research papers in fields on the chemistry–biology boundary which address scientific ideas and approaches to generate and understand natural compounds on a molecular level, and/or use them to stimulate and manipulate biological processes. The topic list on the journal page names bio-chemical synthesis and bioactivities of natural products, isolation including structure elucidation, biochemistry, biotechnology, pharmacology, chemistry and biology.

In practice, the contents pages show what that scope produces: studies of essential oils and their antibacterial or anticholinesterase activity, isolation and characterisation of compounds from plants, fungi and microorganisms, enzyme inhibition studies with therapeutic relevance, work on photosynthesis and plant biochemistry in the journal's earlier decades, and a growing number of computational and in silico studies that model how a natural compound might interact with a biological target. Special issues and special sections are part of the journal's rhythm — past examples named by the publisher include issues on organic chemistry and medicinal applications, essential oils, the chemistry of social insects, chemo-enzymatic cascade reactions and insect biotechnology, as well as memorial issues dedicated to individual scientists in the field. The publisher also operates an Editor's Choice feature, under which selected articles are made freely accessible.

The article formats named by the publisher are original research articles, rapid communications, letters and review articles. That mix is worth noting when judging fit. A full experimental study with isolation data, spectra and bioassays is the journal's core content. A short, urgent finding can fit the rapid communication or letter formats. A review needs to do more than summarise: because the journal positions itself as a community resource for natural products research, a review that maps a compound class, a method or a biological activity in a way other researchers can build on is the kind of manuscript that matches its stated purpose.

Editorial Leadership and Peer Review

The publisher's journal page names Jürgen Seibel as Editor-in-Chief, supported by a scientific advisory board whose members listed at the time of checking included Achim Aigner, Wilhelm Boland, Uwe Bornscheuer and Klaus Hoffmann. Editorial boards of long-running journals change gradually, and De Gruyter maintains the current listing, so researchers should always read the board from the live publisher page rather than from any secondary directory, including this one. ZNC is a peer-reviewed journal operating inside De Gruyter's standard journal production and peer review system, and the publisher presents authoritative and recognised reviewers as one of the benefits of publishing in the title. As with any journal, the practical quality signals an author can check directly are recent issues: are the papers in your exact sub-field, are the methods reported in full, are structures drawn and spectra supplied, and do the papers cite and get cited by the groups you want to reach?

Metrics: What the Numbers Say, and Who Says Them

ZNC carries several different metrics from several different producers, and a careful profile has to keep them separate instead of blending them into a single score. The publisher's journal page displays an Impact Factor of 1.8 at the time of checking. That is the figure De Gruyter chooses to present for the journal; the underlying Journal Impact Factor is produced by Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports, and authors who need the exact JCR year and category ranking for a promotion or funding file should read it in JCR itself. SCImago, which builds its indicators from Scopus data, records an SJR of 0.398 and an h-index of 80 for the journal, with a best quartile of Q3 in the category Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (miscellaneous), and coverage recorded from 1973 onward; those SCImago-derived figures are reported here as aggregator figures, via SCImago-based summaries, not as publisher claims. OpenAlex, a third and independent source, records roughly 7,850 works for the journal, a citation total above 136,000, an h-index of 105 on its own counting, and a two-year mean citedness of about 3.30.

Those numbers do not contradict each other; they count different things. The Journal Impact Factor uses a two-year window over a defined set of citable items in Web of Science. SJR weights citations by the prestige of the citing journal and uses a three-year window over Scopus data. OpenAlex counts a wider and differently deduplicated set of works and citations, which is why its h-index for a journal founded in 1973 runs higher than the Scopus-based figure. The lesson this journal illustrates particularly well is that a metric is only meaningful with its producer, its year and its category attached. “Q3” without the system named, or an impact figure without the year, is not information an author can act on. What the combined evidence does show, consistently across all three systems, is a journal with a deep backfile, a steady citation record concentrated in natural products, biochemistry and plant science, and a mid-range position in its categories rather than a place at the very top of them — a solid specialist venue, cited over decades, whose most-cited papers, such as the classic work on the elastic properties of lipid bilayers, have accumulated thousands of citations.

Indexing and Abstracting

The publisher lists ZNC in a long set of indexing and discovery services. The list given by De Gruyter includes, among others: AGRICOLA, Baidu Scholar, Cabells Journalytics, CABI, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAplus and SciFinder), CNKI Scholar, Dimensions, EBSCO databases and EBSCO Discovery Service, EMBASE, Google Scholar, Japan Science and Technology Agency services, J-Gate, Journal Citation Reports / Science Edition, Medline, Naver Academic, Primo Central, PubMed, Reaxys, SCImago (SJR), Scopus, Semantic Scholar, Summon, Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, WanFang Data, and Web of Science services including Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, Current Contents / Life Sciences, the Science Citation Index and the Science Citation Index Expanded, as well as WorldCat. Inclusion in PubMed and Medline makes the journal visible to biomedical searchers; inclusion in CAS and Reaxys makes it visible to chemists; Scopus and Web of Science coverage is what most institutional evaluation systems ask about. Because indexing lists are maintained by the publisher and the databases themselves, and titles can enter or leave a service, authors with a hard institutional requirement should confirm current coverage in the Scopus source list or the Web of Science Master Journal List at the moment they submit, rather than relying on any profile page.

Publishing in ZNC: Access Model, Charges and Practical Guidance

ZNC is primarily a subscription (licensed) journal with an open access option: the publisher's page marks content as licensed and requiring authentication, which is the De Gruyter presentation for a hybrid journal, and De Gruyter operates a standard open access route for authors whose funders require it. On charges, the honest position is this: OpenAlex records an article processing charge of €2,400 for this journal in its open access data. That is an aggregator-recorded figure for the open access route, not a price quoted in this profile from a publisher fee page, and De Gruyter revises its charges over time. An author planning to take the open access route should confirm the current charge, and any licence terms, on De Gruyter's open access pages for the journal before submission, and should check whether their institution holds a read-and-publish agreement with De Gruyter that covers the fee, since such agreements are common for German and international publishers and can reduce the author's own payment to zero. Authors publishing on the subscription route should likewise check the publisher's current author guidelines for any page or colour charges rather than assuming there are none.

Manuscripts are submitted through the publisher's journal system, reached from the official journal page at degruyter.com. Practical guidance for this specific journal follows from its scope. First, make the natural product the centre of the paper: a bioactivity study of a crude extract with no compound identification is a weaker fit than work that isolates, elucidates or synthesises the responsible compounds. Second, report characterisation data completely — spectroscopic evidence for structure elucidation is the currency of this field, and reviewers in natural products chemistry expect it. Third, where bioactivity is claimed, give the assay, the controls and the concentrations that allow another laboratory to repeat the work. Fourth, for computational papers, connect the prediction back to a natural product's structure or function, which is the connection the publisher's objective statement explicitly asks for. Fifth, write in the journal's language: the publisher lists the language of the journal as English, and although the title is German and the archive contains German-language work from earlier decades, current issues are in English.

Is ZNC the Right Journal for Your Paper?

ZNC is a strong candidate if your work sits on the chemistry–biology boundary, if a natural or natural-like product is at its centre, and if you want a venue with a continuous record since 1973, monthly publication, indexing across the chemical and biomedical databases, and a readership of natural products chemists, biochemists and pharmacologists. It is a weaker candidate if your paper is purely clinical, purely ecological without a molecular component, or pure synthetic chemistry with no biological dimension — Sections and sister journals exist for neighbouring territory, and a manuscript outside the stated scope risks a fast editorial rejection regardless of its quality. Authors who need a top-quartile badge for a specific evaluation exercise should check the current quartile in the exact system their institution uses, because the aggregator evidence for ZNC places it in the middle of its categories, and its value lies in fit, longevity and specialist readership rather than in a headline ranking.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the ISSNs of Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C?
The current print ISSN is 0939-5075 and the electronic ISSN is 1865-7125, as given by the publisher. OpenAlex also lists the legacy print ISSN 0341-0471, which explains why the Journals World record carries three numbers.

Who publishes Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C?
De Gruyter, presented on the current platform as De Gruyter Brill. The journal was previously published by its own house in Tübingen, and De Gruyter has published it since 2015.

When did Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C start?
The parent journal was founded in 1946. It split into Sections A and B in 1947, and Section C was established for the biosciences in 1973, with a first publication date of 20 February 1973 given by the publisher.

What is the impact factor or ranking of ZNC?
The publisher displays an Impact Factor of 1.8 on the journal page. SCImago-derived summaries record an SJR of 0.398, an h-index of 80 and a best quartile of Q3 in Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (miscellaneous). Always quote a metric with its producer and year.

Is ZNC open access?
It is a licensed subscription journal with an open access option. OpenAlex records an APC of €2,400 for the open access route; confirm the current charge and any institutional agreement on the publisher's pages before submitting.

How often does ZNC publish, and in what language?
The publisher states 12 issues per year, and lists the language of the journal as English.

Where do I submit?
Through the publisher's system, reached from the official journal page on degruyter.com for Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C. Do not submit through any third-party site that claims to represent the journal.