Top Nephrology journals
The leading journals in nephrology, ranked within their own field — not across all of science. The measure is computed from open data; how it works, and its limits, are set out in our method.
Scope: Nephrology (NLM Broad Subject Terms).
Grouped by quality band, best first, and listed alphabetically within each band — the bands are the ranking; we do not order named journals against one another.
- Clinical journal of the American Society of Nephrology : CJASN
- Journal of the American Society of Nephrology : JASN
- Kidney international
- Nature reviews. Nephrology
- American journal of kidney diseases : the official journal of the National Kidney Foundation
- American journal of nephrology
- Seminars in nephrology
- Advances in chronic kidney disease
- American journal of physiology. Renal physiology
- BMC nephrology
- Minerva urologica e nefrologica = The Italian journal of urology and nephrology
- Minerva urology and nephrology
- Pediatric nephrology : journal of the International Pediatric Nephrology Association
- Cardiorenal medicine
- Current opinion in nephrology and hypertension
- Journal of nephrology
- Journal of renal care
- Journal of renal nutrition : the official journal of the Council on Renal Nutrition of the National Kidney Foundation
- Kidney & blood pressure research
- Kidney360
- Nephron
- Peritoneal dialysis international : journal of the International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis
- Renal failure
- Seminars in dialysis
- Archivio italiano di urologia, andrologia : organo ufficiale [di] Società italiana di ecografia urologica e nefrologica
- CEN case reports
- Clinical and experimental nephrology
- Hemodialysis international
- International urology and nephrology
- Jornal brasileiro de nefrologia
- Nefrología
- Nefrología : publicación oficial de la Sociedad Española Nefrologia
- Nephrology
- Néphrologie & thérapeutique
34 ranked journals. Computed 2026-09-04, citation window 2019–2022. Journals too new or too small to rank fairly are not listed — “unranked” is not a zero.
Questions
- Where are the urology (surgical kidney) journals?
- Urology is a separate NLM discipline: surgical kidney and urinary-tract journals are ranked under Urology, medical kidney journals under Nephrology. Keeping them apart stops each list from being diluted.
- Does a higher band mean a better journal for every topic?
- Not necessarily. The bands measure citation reach across nephrology as a whole; a strong dialysis or transplantation journal may sit below the broad flagships. It is a starting point, not the final word for a niche.
- How current is this ranking?
- It is recomputed about once a year over a multi-year citation window, and the calculation date is shown beneath the list. Recent, fast-moving work may not yet be reflected in citation counts.
Spotted an error?
If a journal looks misclassified — the wrong discipline, a missing title, a band that seems off — please tell us at [email protected]. Every report gets an answer, and a confirmed error is corrected at the latest when the ranking is next recomputed.
What this is not
- This ranks journals, not individual articles: it says nothing about the validity of any single paper.
- It is not medical advice and no substitute for clinical judgement or reading the work itself.
- The ranking is factual and method-based, computed the same way for every title. Like any method that ranks journals, though, it carries bias and is not a definitive judgement on a journal's quality or relevance — neither an endorsement nor a criticism of any journal or publisher.
See also the Nephrology literature digest — a daily email of new nephrology articles, filtered by these same quality bands.