JOURNALS WHICH PUBLISH MARINE MAMMAL PAPERS
By
Colin D. MacLeod
email: macleod_c@colloquium.co.ukA large number of journals accept papers related to marine mammal biology. From a brief survey of English language journals on an abstract database 148 journals have published over 500 papers on marine mammals in the 5 years between 1993 - 1997. This is in addition to non-English language journals and those journals not included in the database. These journals cover all fields of marine mammalogy including basic biology and natural history, parasitology, behaviour, physiology, molecular biology and genetics.
However, only a few of these journals account for a large proportion of the 500 or so papers published in the last five years. The graph below shows the number of papers published in each journal in the last five years. The X axis is the number of papers and the Y axis is the rank of the journals. About 6% of the journals account for 40% of all the marine mammal papers (Canadian Field-Naturalist, Canadian Journal of Zoology, Chemosphere, Journal of Mammalogy, Journal of Wildlife Diseases, Marine Mammal Science, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Science of the Total Environment).
In addition to this only 7 journals have published marine mammal papers in each of these five years (Canadian Field Naturalist, Canadian Journal of Zoology, Journal of the Helminth Society of Washington, Marine Mammal Science, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Polar Biology).
Graph of Distribution of marine mammal papers 1993 - 1997.
Graph of Marine Mammal Papers Vs. Canid Papers 1993 - 1997.
This can be compared to papers published on another taxonomic group - the Canids - Dogs, Wolves,
Foxes etc. In Canids 40% of the papers are published by 22% of the journals. This is a much more even
spread as shown by this graph. The top line is Marine Mammal papers and the bottom is Canid papers.
X axis is the number of papers and Y axis is the Rank of the journal. I have not included the top ranking
Marine Mammal journal - Marine Mammal Science - for two reasons. Firstly it only publishes marine
mammal papers and so does not suit this sort of comparison, and secondly because the number of marine
mammal papers published is so much greater than any other journal and is off the scale of the Y axis.
This bias in publication of marine mammal papers is not necessarily due to journals not accepting papers
on marine mammals, but may be due to a tendency for marine mammal papers be to submitted to a
limited number of journals.
Table of Impact Factors (JCR, 1996 edition) for Top Five Marine Mammal Journals and Top Five Canid Journals:
| Marine Mammals: | Canids: | ||
| Marine Mammal Science | 0.402 | Journal of Wildlife Diseases | 0.642 |
| Canadian Journal of Zoology | 0.685 | Wildlife Research | 0.922 |
| Canadian Field-Naturalist | 0.210 | Journal of Mammalogy | 0.839 |
| Marine Pollution Bulletin | 1.023 | Journal of Zoology | 0.825 |
| Journal of Wildlife Diseases | 0.642 | Canadian Journal of Zoology | 0.685 |
It is interesting to note that the top five marine mammal journals generally have lower impact factors than
the top five Canid journals as shown in this table. This suggests many marine mammal papers which may
be of interest to people working in other fields are not coming to their attention.
As an example of this I have taken three marine mammal papers published in marine mammal journals
which would be of interest to the wider scientific community and show other non-taxonomic journals
where they could have been published and been likely to have been read by a wider audience.
Incidentally this does not mean that the authors did anything wrong in publishing them where they were
published it just means that others, out side the field of marine mammals may not be aware of their
existence.
Brody, A.J., Ralls, K. and Siniff, D.B. 1996. Potential impact of oil spills on California sea otters:
Implications of the Exxon valdez spill in Alaska. Marine Mammal Science, 12: 38 - 53.
Other potential journals which would consider papers dealing with contamination of the marine
environment and its effect on marine mammals include Environmental pollution, Marine Pollution
Bulletin, Oil and Gas Journal and Water, Air and Soil Pollution
Samuels, A. and Gifford, T. 1997. A quantitative assessment of dominance relationships among
bottlenose dolphins. Marine Mammal Science, 12: 70 - 99.
Papers on behaviour such as this could also be submitted to Animal Behaviour; Behavioural Ecology and
Sociobiology or Ethology.
Bigg, M.A., Olesuik, P.F., Ellis, G.M., Ford, J.K.B. and Balcomb, K.C. 1990. Social organisation and
genealogy of resident killer whales (Orcinus orca) in the coastal waters of British Columbia and
Washington State. IWC Special Issue 12. Individual Recognition of Cetaceans. Pp. 383 - 405.
This paper discusses some very important biological issues, such as the non-dispersal of either sex - this is very unusual for mammals and has some major implications for how mammal social systems are thought about. As such it could have been published to journals such as Journal of Mammalogy, Animal Behaviour or possibly even Nature. In any of these journals it would have come to the attention of a much wider readership, such as people working on social systems in other species and in mammals in general.