Chiang Mai University Journal of Natural Science (CMU J. Nat. Sci.) is an open access, double-blind peer-reviewed journal managed by the Chiang Mai University. It was established in 2002 with three issues per year. In 2009, our journal was indexed in Scopus and began publishing four issues per year. The overarching aim of the CMU J. Nat. Sci. was to publish peer-reviewed research in the areas of agriculture, biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, environmental science, life science, materials science, physics, mathematics, medicine and health. In 2021, the journal changed its name to “Natural Sciences” with a more focused aim to publish papers in four categories: biological sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, and medicinal sciences.

There were several editorial changes in 2020, including a revised and expanded editorial board and my taking over as editor-in-chief. We revised our peer review process to provide quicker reviews, now having an average time from submission to first decision of 2 months and from acceptance to online publishing of 1 month. Steps in the new peer review process are provided in our newly updated website (https://cmuj.cmu.ac.th/). We expanded the visibility of the journal through social media presence, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The number of submissions has increased over the last 4 years, from 105 articles in 2017 to 155 articles in 2020 (Figure 1). The acceptance rate also has increased from 11-14% in 2017-2018 to 27-35% in 2019-2020. CMU J. Nat. Sci. has a global reach, with authors from 29 countries (Figure 2). Among these articles, the highest number of citations was 60 in 2020 (Table 1). As the quality of publications has improved, so has the ranking of CMU J. Nat. Sci. Based on the Scimago Journal Ranking (https://www.scimagojr.com), the journal ranking has increased from Q4 in 2016 to Q3 in 2019, the CiteScore is now 0.714, SJR score is 0.17, and H-index is 9.

Citation: Nganvongpanit, K. 2021. Annual report’s CMUJ. Nat. Sci. in 2020. CMUJ. Nat. Sci. 20(3): e2021000.

Figure 1. The number of received, rejected, accepted and published papers from 2017-2020 (A). The number of published papers in each of the four issues between 2017 and 2020 (B).

Figure 2. The distribution of authors published in CMU J. Nat. Sci. across different countries. The predominated authors are Thailand (372) following, Japan (23), Indonesia (17), United States (15), Bangladesh (14), Australia (10), Malaysia (10), Germany (8), Iran (6), Italy (5), China (4), South Korea (4), Taiwan (4), Viet Nam (4),  India (3), Switzerland (3), United Kingdom (3), Egypt (2), Philippines (2), Poland (2), Algeria (1), Canada (1), France (1), Netherlands (1), Nigeria (1), Pakistan (1), Russian Federation (1), Saudi Arabia (1) and Turkey (1). Data extracted from the Scopus database on 2 February 2021.

Table 1. The most cited articles from CMUJ. Nat. Sci. in Scopus database.

In 2021, the journal will aim to publish at least 25 articles in each issue, which would increase the number of publication to 100 articles per year. We will focus on attracting more high-quality submissions from around the world to try and increase our CiteScore. For all that this journal has achieved this year, I am deeply indebted to the editorial board, the journal's staff, and the reviewers. I would like to convey my gratitude to the many scholars who submitted manuscripts to this journal during the past year. We thank all of our sponsors and the Chiang Mai University, Thailand for their support in publishing this journal, and the enthusiasm by which they sustain our operations.

OPEN access freely available online

Chiang Mai University Journal of Natural Sciences [ISSN 16851994]

Chiang Mai University, Thailand https://cmuj.cmu.ac.th