premier technical publication? what does premier mean here?

first-rate? first in rank or degree?

Context:

The premier technical publication in the field, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery is a resource collecting relevant common methods and techniques and a forum for unifying the diverse constituent research communities.
The journal publishes original technical papers in both the research and practice of data mining and knowledge discovery, surveys and tutorials of important areas and techniques, and detailed descriptions of significant applications.
Coverage includes:
- Theory and Foundational Issues
- Data Mining Methods
- Algorithms for Data Mining
- Knowledge Discovery Process
- Application Issues.

More:
http://link.springer.com/journal/10618