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Plant Science · 328 journals ranked · top 40 listed

Best open-access journals for Plant Science

The top 40 of 328 Plant Science journals, open-access only, ranked by Scimago quartile, then by whether OpenAlex and Scimago agree on the subject and how central Plant Science is to each journal, then OpenAlex cites/paper (2-year window), leaving out journals both place in another discipline, drawn from a 17,500-venue index. Predatory venues are excluded; the FAQ below gives the exact ranking rule. These are field-wide rankings — for a shortlist matched to your specific paper, paste your title and abstract into the Journal Finder (a free account starts with 25 welcome credits).

Data as of — the date our venue index was last rebuilt from OpenAlex and Scimago.

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AllBest open-access journals
  1. 1
    Plant Communications
    9.4 cites/paper · Q1 · Elsevier BV
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  2. 2
    Plant Biotechnology Journal
    8.8 cites/paper · Q1 · Wiley
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  3. 3
    Plant Stress
    7.6 cites/paper · Q1 · Elsevier BV
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  4. 4
    Plant Methods
    7.2 cites/paper · Q1 · BioMed Central
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  5. 5
    Horticulture Research
    6.8 cites/paper · Q1 · Nature Portfolio
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  6. 6
    The Crop Journal
    6.4 cites/paper · Q1 · KeAi
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  7. 7
    Environmental and Experimental Botany
    6.1 cites/paper · Q1 · Elsevier BV
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  8. 8
    Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine
    6.0 cites/paper · Q1 · BioMed Central
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  9. 9
    Frontiers in Plant Science
    5.6 cites/paper · Q1 · Frontiers Media
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  10. 10
    Rice
    5.5 cites/paper · Q1 · Springer Science+Business Media
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  11. 11
    Smart Agricultural Technology
    5.4 cites/paper · Q1 · Elsevier BV
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  12. 12
    Horticultural Plant Journal
    5.3 cites/paper · Q1 · KeAi
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of Science
  13. 13
    Plants
    5.1 cites/paper · Q1 · Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  14. 14
    Agriculture
    5.0 cites/paper · Q1 · Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  15. 15
    BMC Plant Biology
    4.9 cites/paper · Q1 · BioMed Central
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  16. 16
    Plant Signaling & Behavior
    4.9 cites/paper · Q1 · Taylor & Francis
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  17. 17
    Journal of Fungi
    4.4 cites/paper · Q1 · Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  18. 18
    Molecular Plant Pathology
    4.1 cites/paper · Q1 · Wiley
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  19. 19
    Horticulturae
    3.9 cites/paper · Q1 · Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  20. 20
    The Plant Genome
    3.9 cites/paper · Q1 · Crop Science Society of America
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  21. 21
    Annals of Agricultural Science Cairo
    3.7 cites/paper · Q1
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of Science
  22. 22
    Frontiers in Agronomy
    3.4 cites/paper · Q1 · Frontiers Media
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  23. 23
    Egyptian Journal of Biological Pest Control
    3.4 cites/paper · Q1 · Springer Nature
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of Science
  24. 24
    Scientifica
    3.3 cites/paper · Q1 · Hindawi Publishing Corporation
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  25. 25
    Journal of Integrative Agriculture
    3.2 cites/paper · Q1 · Elsevier BV
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  26. 26
    AoB Plants
    3.0 cites/paper · Q1 · Oxford University Press
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  27. 27
    Rice Science
    2.9 cites/paper · Q1 · Elsevier BV
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of Science
  28. 28
    MycoKeys
    2.8 cites/paper · Q1 · Pensoft Publishers
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  29. 29
    Ethnobotany Research and Applications
    0.8 cites/paper · Q1 · University of Hawaii Press
    Open AccessScopus
  30. 30
    Plant Diversity
    4.6 cites/paper · Q1 · Science Press
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  31. 31
    Pharmaceutical Biology
    6.6 cites/paper · Q1 · Taylor & Francis
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  32. 32
    Chemical and Biological Technologies in Agriculture
    5.6 cites/paper · Q1 · Springer Nature
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  33. 33
    Agronomy
    5.1 cites/paper · Q1 · Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  34. 34
    Scientia Horticulturae
    5.0 cites/paper · Q1 · Elsevier BV
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of Science
  35. 35
    Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
    4.3 cites/paper · Q1 · Frontiers Media
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  36. 36
    AgriEngineering
    3.7 cites/paper · Q1 · Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of Science
  37. 37
    Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions
    3.5 cites/paper · Q1 · American Phytopathological Society
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  38. 38
    Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research
    3.1 cites/paper · Q1 · Wiley
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  39. 39
    The Plant Pathology Journal
    2.8 cites/paper · Q1 · Hanrimwon Publishing Company
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of SciencePubMed
  40. 40
    OENO One
    2.7 cites/paper · Q1 · ADERA
    Open AccessDOAJScopusWeb of Science

“Cites/paper” is the OpenAlex 2-year citation rate — a transparent signal, not a licensed Impact Factor. Many regional and open-access journals are strong but aren’t covered by Scimago, so they show “no Scimago quartile”; that’s a coverage gap, not a quality judgement.

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Frequently asked

Plant Communications, Plant Biotechnology Journal, Plant Stress, Plant Methods, Horticulture Research lead this list, drawn from a 17,500-venue index. The top 40 of 328 ranked venues are listed on this page; all 40 are Scimago Q1. Journals are placed by two independent classifications, OpenAlex's and Scimago's, plus any documented corrections. A journal both place under Plant Science ranks ahead, within its Scimago quartile, of one only OpenAlex places there — because Scimago does not cover it, files it as Multidisciplinary, or files it under a neighbouring subject or only under a broad “(miscellaneous)” category (which counts as agreement when Plant Science is the journal's main OpenAlex subfield). 4 journals OpenAlex files under Plant Science are left out because OpenAlex's main field for them and Scimago's categories both place them in another discipline. By Scimago quartile first (Q1 → Q4, then venues without one). Within a quartile, journals both sources place under Plant Science come first, then venues whose main OpenAlex subfield is Plant Science come before those that list it second or third, and ties go to OpenAlex cites/paper over a 2-year window. A venue whose main subfield is unrelated to Plant Science — fewer than a quarter of the venues filed under that subfield (or fewer than five) are also filed under Plant Science — is listed after all the others. Where cites/paper decides, a journal with fewer than 30 papers in OpenAlex over the four most recent publication years is listed after those with more: a two-year average over so few papers can rest on a single article (4 of the 328 journals ranked here are below that floor; none of them is among the 40 shown). Only open-access venues are included. Cites/paper is a transparent citation rate, not a licensed Impact Factor, and journals flagged as predatory are excluded. For a match to your specific paper use the Journal Finder (15 credits; free account starts with 25).

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