Key journals - What to read and where to publish

Peer-reviewed articles reporting advances in the science and policy of freshwater appear in a number of specialists and more general journals. If you are looking to publish in the field, or keep abreast of latest developments, we suggest that you become familiar with the following journals. You can sign-up for free email content alerts via the links to the journal homepages.

Journals are presented here in alphabetical order. If you think a key journal is missing from this list please email us at

Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems is an international journal dedicated to publishing original papers that relate specifically to freshwater, brackish or marine habitats and encouraging work that spans these ecosystems.

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Aquatic Data is an open access journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles describing research data from fundamental and applied research, as well as citizens' involvement in the field of aquatic sciences.

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Aquatic Sciences - Research Across Boundaries publishes original research, overviews, and reviews dealing with aquatic systems (wetlands, freshwater and marine systems) and their boundaries, including the impact of human activities on these systems. The coverage ranges from molecular-level mechanistic studies to investigations at the whole ecosystem scale, including fish ecology. 

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Biological Conservation publishes papers that advance the science and practice of conservation, or which demonstrate the application of conservation principles for natural resource management and policy.

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Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ): This journal is part of a community peer-reviewed, open-access, comprehensive online platform, designed to accelerate publishing, dissemination and sharing of biodiversity-related data of any kind. The journal publishes papers in biodiversity science containing taxonomic, floristic/faunistic, morphological, genomic, phylogenetic, ecological or environmental data on any taxon of any geological age from any part of the world.

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Biological Reviews covers the entire range of the biological sciences, presenting several review articles per issue. Although scholarly and with extensive bibliographies, the articles are aimed at non-specialist biologists as well as researchers in the field.

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BioScience publishes timely and authoritative overviews of current research in biology, accompanied by essays and discussion sections on education, public policy, history, and the conceptual underpinnings of the biological sciences.

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BMC Bioinformatics publishes articles on all aspects of the development, testing and novel application of computational and statistical methods for the modeling and analysis of all kinds of biological data, as well as other areas of computational biology.

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Conservation Biology publishes groundbreaking papers and is instrumental in defining the key issues contributing to the science and practice of conserving Earth’s biological diversity.

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Conservation Letters publishes empirical and theoretical research with significant implications for the conservation of biological diversity.

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Diversity and Distributions is the journal of conservation biogeography. It publishes papers that deal with the application of biogeographical principles, theories, and analyses (being those concerned with the distributional dynamics of taxa and assemblages) to problems concerning the conservation of biodiversity.

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Ecography is focused on broad spatial and temporal patterns, particularly studies of population and community ecology, macroecology, biogeography, and ecological conservation. There is no bias with regard to taxon, biome, or biogeographical area.

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The ultimate aim of Ecological Indicators is to integrate the monitoring and assessment of ecological and environmental indicators with management practices.

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Environmental Conservation is an interdisciplinary environmental science journal. It includes research papers, reports, comments, subject reviews, and book reviews addressing environmental policy, practice, and natural and social science of environmental concern at the global level, informed by rigorous local level case studies.

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The European Journal of Taxonomy is a peer-reviewed international journal in descriptive taxonomy, covering the eukaryotic world. Its content is fully electronic and Open Access. It is published and funded by a consortium of European natural history institutions.

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Fisheries features peer-reviewed technical articles on all aspects of aquatic resource-related subjects, as well as professional issues, new ideas and approaches, education, economics, administration, and law.

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Freshwater Metadata Journal aims to easily publish freshwater (biodiversity) related metadata and to bring about a change of perception regarding data publishing in the freshwater scientific community.

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Freshwater Biology publishes papers on all aspects of the ecology of inland surface waters, including rivers and lakes, connected ground waters, flood plains and other wetlands.  We publish studies of micro-organisms, algae, macrophytes, invertebrates, fish and other vertebrates, as well as those concerning whole systems and related physical and chemical aspects of the environment. Manuscripts with an experimental or conceptual flavour are especially welcome, as are those which integrate laboratory and field work, and studies from less well researched areas of the world.

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Freshwater Reviews is a peer-reviewed international journal dedicated to enhancing the understanding of inland waters. The content of review papers is primarily biological but papers covering limnology, policy and socio-economic aspects of fresh waters are acceptable if they are relevant to our understanding or management of fresh water biology.

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Freshwater Science (FWS) publishes articles that advance understanding and environmental stewardship of all types of inland aquatic ecosystems (lakes, rivers, streams, reservoirs, subterranean, and estuaries) and ecosystems at the interface between aquatic and terrestrial habitats (wetlands, riparian areas, and floodplains).

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Fundamental and Applied Limnology is an international journal for freshwater research in the widest sense, including problems of marine biology and brackish water research. Papers dealing with ecological topics are especially welcome in association with experimental or physiological studies.

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Global Change Biology exists to promote understanding of the interface between all aspects of current environmental change that affects a substantial part of the globe and biological systems.

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Global Ecology and Biogeography focuses on the emerging field of macroecology: the study of broad, consistent patterns in the ecological characteristics of organisms and ecosystems.

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Hydrobiologia publishes original research, reviews and opinions investigating the biology of all aquatic environments, including the impact of human activities.

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Journal of Animal Ecology publishes the best original research on all aspects of animal ecology, ranging from the molecular to the ecosystem level. These may be field, laboratory and theoretical studies utilising terrestrial, freshwater or marine systems.

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Journal of Applied Ecology publishes novel, high impact papers on the interface between ecological science and the management of biological resources.

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The Journal of Freshwater Ecology is intended to be a vehicle for the reasonably rapid dissemination of current limnological information.

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Limnologica publishes peer-reviewed articles addressing biological, physical and chemical aspects of freshwater ecosystems and adjacent habitats.

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Marine and Freshwater Research is an international and interdisciplinary journal publishing contributions on all aquatic environments.

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Nature is the world's most highly cited interdisciplinary science journal, according to the 2010 Journal Citation Reports Science Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2011). Its Impact Factor is 36.101.

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PeerJ is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal. It considers and publishes Research Articles in the Biological and Medical Sciences. It aims for rapid decision making and will publish articles as soon as they are ready.

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Science is the world's leading journal of original scientific research, global news, and commentary.

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Science of the Total Environment is an international journal for publication of original research on the total environment, which includes the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and anthroposphere.

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Trends in Ecology & Evolution contains polished, concise and readable reviews, opinions and letters in all areas of ecology and evolutionary science.

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Scientific Data is an open-access, online-only publication for descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets, and exists to help you publish, discover and reuse research data. Scientific Data is open to submissions from a broad range of natural science disciplines, including descriptions of big and small data, from major consortiums and single labs.

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ZooKeys is a peer-reviewed, open-access, online and print, rapidly produced journal launched to support free exchange of ideas and information in systematic zoology, phylogeny and biogeography.

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Zootaxa is a peer-reviewed international journal for rapid publication of high quality papers on any aspect of systematic zoology, with a preference for large taxonomic works such as monographs and revisions. Zootaxa considers papers on all animal taxa, both living and fossil, and especially encourages descriptions of new taxa.

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