The Biological Bulletin is a peer-reviewed

Peer review

Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...

 scientific journal

Scientific journal

In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...

 covering the field of biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

. The journal was established in 1897 as the Zoological Bulletin by Charles Otis Whitman

Charles Otis Whitman

-External links:***-Notes:...

 and William Morton Wheeler

William Morton Wheeler

William Morton Wheeler, Ph.D. was an American entomologist, myrmecologist and Harvard professor.-Early life:...

. In 1899 the title was changed to The Biological Bulletin, and production was transferred to the Marine Biological Laboratory

Marine Biological Laboratory

The Marine Biological Laboratory is an international center for research and education in biology, biomedicine and ecology. Founded in 1888, the MBL is the oldest independent marine laboratory in the Americas, taking advantage of a coastal setting in the Cape Cod village of Woods Hole, Massachusetts...

 at Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Woods Hole is a census-designated place in the town of Falmouth in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. It lies at the extreme southwest corner of Cape Cod, near Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands...

. The current managing editor is Carol Schachinger.

The Biological Bulletin is indexed by several bibliographic services, including Index Medicus

Index medicus

Index Medicus is a comprehensive index of medical scientific journal articles, published since 1879. It was initiated by John Shaw Billings, head of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, United States Army...

, MEDLINE

MEDLINE

MEDLINE is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care...

, Chemical Abstracts

Chemical Abstracts Service

Chemical Abstracts is a periodical index that provides summaries and indexes of disclosures in recently published scientific documents. Approximately 8,000 journals, technical reports, dissertations, conference proceedings, and new books, in any of 50 languages, are monitored yearly, as are patent...

, Current Contents

Current Contents

Current Contents is a rapid alerting service database from the Institute for Scientific Information, now part of Thomson Reuters, that is published online and in several different printed subject sections.-History:...

, BIOBASE

Elsevier BIOBASE

Not to be confused with BIOBASE , a German publisher of molecular biology databases.Elsevier BIOBASE is a bibliographic database covering all topics pertaining to biological research throughout the world. It was established in the 1950s in print format as Current Awareness in Biological Sciences....

, and Geo Abstracts. Six issues are published per year and all content is made freely available one year after publication. According to the Journal Citation Reports

Journal Citation Reports

Journal Citation Reports is an annual publication by the Healthcare & Science division of Thomson Reuters. It has been integrated with the Web of Knowledge, by Thomson Reuters, and is accessed from the Web of Science to JCR Web. It provides information about academic journals in the sciences and...

, the journal has a 2009 impact factor

Impact factor

The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed...

of 1.942.