ISME Journal

Aims & Scope

The ISME Journal seeks to promote diverse and integrated areas of microbial ecology spanning the breadth of microbial life, including bacteria, archaea, microbial eukaryotes, and viruses.

Contributions of broad biological interest and impact are especially encouraged.

Topics of particular interest within the journal's scope include those listed below: - Microbial population and community ecology. - Microbe-microbe and microbe-host interactions. - Evolutionary genetics. - Integrated genomics and post-genomics approaches in microbial ecology. - Microbial engineering. - Geomicrobiology and microbial contributions to geochemical cycles. - Microbial ecology and functional diversity of natural habitats. - Microbial ecosystem impacts.

Metrics & Ranking

Abstracting & Indexing

Journal is indexed in leading academic databases, ensuring global visibility and accessibility of our peer-reviewed research.

• Scopus
• Google Scholar
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• Web of Science

Subjects & Keywords

Journal’s research areas, covering key disciplines and specialized sub-topics in Agricultural and Biological Sciences and Immunology and Microbiology, designed to support cutting-edge academic discovery.

Licensing & Copyright

This journal operates under an Open Access model. Articles are freely accessible to the public immediately upon publication. The content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), allowing users to share and adapt the work with proper attribution.

Copyright remains with the author(s), and no permission is required for non-commercial use, provided the original source is cited.

Policy Links

This section provides access to essential policy documents, guidelines, and resources related to the journal’s publication and submission processes.

• Aims scope
• Homepage
• Oa statement
• Author instructions
• License terms
• Review url
• Board url
• Copyright url
• Plagiarism url
• Preservation url
• Apc url
• License

Plagiarism Policy

This journal follows a plagiarism policy. All submitted manuscripts are screened using reliable plagiarism detection software to ensure originality and academic integrity. Authors are responsible for proper citation and acknowledgment of all sources, and any form of plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, will not be tolerated.

For more details, please refer to our official: Plagiarism Policy.

APC Details

The journal’s Article Processing Charge (APC) policies support open access publishing in Agricultural and Biological Sciences and Immunology and Microbiology, ensuring accessibility and quality in research dissemination.

This journal requires an Article Processing Charge (APC) to support open access publishing, covering peer review, editing, and distribution. The current APC is 3,675.00 EUR. Learn more.

Explore journals without APCs for alternative publishing options.

Most Cited Articles

The Most Cited Articles section features the journal's most impactful research, based on citation counts. These articles have been referenced frequently by other researchers, indicating their significant contribution to their respective fields.

• Ultra-high-throughput microbial community analysis on the Illumina HiSeq and MiSeq platforms

  Citation: 7524

  Authors: J Gregory, Christian L, William A, Donna, James, Noah, Sarah M, Jason, Louise, Markus, Niall, Jack A, Geoff, Rob

• An improved Greengenes taxonomy with explicit ranks for ecological and evolutionary analyses of bacteria and archaea

  Citation: 4428

  Authors: Daniel, Morgan N, Julia, Eric P, Todd Z, Alexander, Gary L, Rob, Philip

• Soil bacterial and fungal communities across a pH gradient in an arable soil

  Citation: 3432

  Authors: Johannes, Erland, Philip C, Christian L, Catherine, J Gregory, Rob, Noah

• Exact sequence variants should replace operational taxonomic units in marker-gene data analysis

  Citation: 2670

  Authors: Benjamin J, Paul J, Susan P

• Transitions in bacterial communities along the 2000 km salinity gradient of the Baltic Sea

  Citation: 2422

  Authors: Daniel P R, Matthias, Klaus, Stefan, Joanna J, Anders F

• Using network analysis to explore co-occurrence patterns in soil microbial communities

  Citation: 2414

  Authors: Albert, Scott T, Emilio O, Noah

• UniFrac: an effective distance metric for microbial community comparison

  Citation: 2336

  Authors: Catherine, Manuel E, Dan, Jesse, Rob

• dRep: a tool for fast and accurate genomic comparisons that enables improved genome recovery from metagenomes through de-replication

  Citation: 2213

  Authors: Matthew R, Christopher T, Brandon, Jillian F

• Quantifying community assembly processes and identifying features that impose them

  Citation: 1968

  Authors: James C, Xueju, Jim K, Xingyuan, David W, Christopher J, Mark L, Allan

• Stochastic and deterministic assembly processes in subsurface microbial communities

  Citation: 1606

  Authors: James C, Xueju, Allan E, James K