The ''Journal of Heredity'' is a

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such ...

concerned with

heredity Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic informa ...

in a biological sense, covering all aspects of

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar work ...

. It is published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

on behalf of the

American Genetic Association The American Genetic Association (AGA) is a USA-based professional scientific organization dedicated to the study of genetics and genomics which was founded as the American Breeders' Association in 1903. The association has published the '' Journ ...

History

The trends in topics that have been published in the journal reflect the history of the discipline of genetics.Crow, J F (2004). "Genetics: Alive and Well. The First Hundred Years as Viewed Through the Pages of the Journal of Heredity. WILHEMINE E. KEY 2003 INVITATIONAL LECTURE". J Hered (95(5):365–374. Early issues included many papers on

eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...

, particularly under the editorial leadership of the journal's first two

editors-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

, Paul Popenoe and R. C. Cook. Emphasis on eugenics in the journal declined throughout the 1940s and 1950s as support for the topic waned in the scientific community and the general public; when Cook's daughter, Barbara Kuhn, took over as editor in 1962 after her father's 40-year service, "...the subject of eugenics was essentially dropped." Early topics of interest included comparative color inheritance in mammals (as explored in a series of articles that served as precursors to work applying enzyme kinetics to developmental genetics), determination of the number of human chromosomes, genetic histories of a number of types of livestock (including hybridization of cattle with American bison, the discovery of salivary chromosomes in ''Drosophila'', and "A remarkable paper by Prokofyeva-Belgovskaya, pointing out a difference between mother and daughter chromosomes in binucleate cells. This foreshadowed modern work in intestinal tumors in which there are differences between cells containing the template DNA and those with copies."

Editors-in-chief

The following persons have been editor-in-chief of the journal: *

Paul Popenoe Paul Bowman Popenoe (October 16, 1888 – June 19, 1979) was an American agricultural explorer and eugenicist. He was an influential advocate of the compulsory sterilization of mentally ill people and people with mental disabilities, and the fa ...

(1913–1921) * Robert C. Cook (1922–1962) * Barbara Kuhn (1963–1986) *

Stephen J. O'Brien Stephen J. O'Brien (born 1944) is an American geneticist. He is known for his research contributions in comparative genomics, virology, genetic epidemiology, mammalian systematics and species conservation. Member of the National Academy of Scienc ...

(1987–2007) * C. Scott Baker (2007–2016) * William Murphy (2017–present)

Article types

The journal publishes articles in the following categories: * Original Research * Brief Communications * Computer Notes * Letters to the Editor and on invitation: * Reviews * Perspectives * Symposium Articles

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in: *

BIOSIS Previews BIOSIS Previews is an English-language, bibliographic database service, with abstracts and citation indexing. It is part of '' Clarivate Analytics Web of Science'' suite. BIOSIS Previews indexes data from 1926 to the present. BIOSIS Previews ...

Chemical Abstracts Service CAS (formerly Chemical Abstracts Service) is a division of the American Chemical Society. It is a source of chemical information. CAS is located in Columbus, Ohio, United States. Print periodicals ''Chemical Abstracts'' is a periodical index th ...

Current Contents ''Current Contents'' is a rapid alerting service database from Clarivate Analytics, formerly the Institute for Scientific Information and Thomson Reuters. It is published online and in several different printed subject sections. History ''C ...

/Life Sciences * EMBASE *

Index Medicus ''Index Medicus'' (''IM'') is a curated subset of MEDLINE, which is a bibliographic database of life science and biomedical science information, principally scientific journal articles. From 1879 to 2004, ''Index Medicus'' was a comprehensi ...

MEDLINE MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering med ...

PubMed PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintai ...

Science Citation Index The Science Citation Index Expanded – previously entitled Science Citation Index – is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and created by Eugene Garfield. It was officially launched in 1964 ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control Genetics journals Publications established in 1910 Oxford University Press academic journals Hybrid open access journals English-language journals 7 times per year journals