Good news for Elsevier journals

The 2011 impact factors have just been published, and once more Elsevier journals lead the mineral processing field:

Hydromet                                2.027
Minerals Engineering             1.352
Int. J. Min. Proc.                     1.304
Min Proc. & Ext. Met.Rev.    0.667
Can. Met. Quart.                     0.443
Int. J. Coal Prep. & Util.        0.289
Minerals & Met. Proc.           0.280
J.SAIMM                                0.182
The specialist journal Hydrometallurgy has, as always, the highest impact factor, as it specialises in the area having the most researchers and hence the most citations.

In the general field of mineral pocessing, Minerals Engineering has increased its impact factor, but the gap between Minerals Engineering and its sister journal International Journal of Mineral Processing has closed, the difference between the two being virtually insignificant considering the vagaries of the impact factor system.

What is most noticeable, however, is the big void between the leading Elsevier journals and other peer-reviewed journals servicing this field.

Although I should rejoice at Minerals Engineering’s renewed status as the number 1 mineral processing journal, I have often gone on record expressing my dissatisfaction concerning impact factor, and gain much more satisfaction from feed back from the journal authors (see posting of 28th June). I do not have author feed back data for Hydrometallurgy or International Journal of Mineral Processing, but if the editors would like to share them I will be happy to publish in MEI.