The story of success of the Journal of the National Science Foundation (JNSF): First and only Sri Lankan Journal indexed in SCIE
Having identified the need of a local platform to disseminate results of research conducted by local
researchers, the Journal of the National Science Foundation was first published in 1972 as the Journal of National Science Council. This visionary initiative was rooted at a time that proper media for scientific information dissemination was scarce. Since then, hundreds of local scientists were benefited and made their research work visible to the international arena at no cost.
The journal has been evolving with many milestones during the last 50 years. The name of the journal was changed to ‘Journal of the National Science Foundation’ in 1998 when the NARESA was succeeded by the NSF. Number of issues increased from two to four to accommodate more publications. In 2005, the first International Editorial Advisory Board was appointed to obtain guidance from leading scientists of other continents.
The journal was face-lifted in 2006 to make it more attractive and competitive. With that, in 2006 the journal was cited in two databases of the Thomson Scientific Index: BIOSIS Previews and Zoological Records. The JNSF was the first Sri Lankan Journal to be indexed in the Clarivate Analytics Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) (then owned by Thomson Reuters) in 2008. The JNSF is the only Sri Lankan journal ever indexed in the SCIE and has been able to maintain its position in the SCIE for 14 consecutive years among thousands of other international journals. This propelled an influx of articles from all continents, the majority being from the Asian region. In addition to SCIE, the Journal is now indexed in 8 databases including Scopus. The JNSF declared open access in 2013. Online processing was initiated in 2018 through Sri Lanka Journals Online SLJOL platform, while maintaining its dedicated website for easy reference of each issue of the Journal by the scientific community. The JNSF Impact Factor reached its highest (0.682) this year (2022) reaching another milestone.
In this year (2022) the JNSF releases its 50th publication volume. During this 50-year journey of
the JNSF, scientists from all S&T related disciplines have contributed and collaborated in many ways as authors, reviewers, Editorial Board members. A special issue enriched with scholarly reviews contributed by world renowned Sri Lankan scientists, home and abroad is ready to publish to mark 50th publication volume.