Journal Rankings Are Metrics That Provide Information on How a Journal Performs in Comparison with Other Journals in the Same Discipline
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Follow us on Journal rankings are metrics that provide information on how a journal performs in comparison with other journals in the same discipline. Knowing where best to publish and who will accept your article requires experience and information about how important the journal is in your particular field. Publishing in a high impact journal means your work is more likely to be cited. Journal Ranking Tools The Journal Citation Reports (JCR) from Thomson Reuters (part of the Web of Science suite of databases) and Elsevier’s Scopus Database are the 2 main sources of data for all the metrics below. The University subscribes to both resources which are accessible via Library Search. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses and journals will be covered by one, both or none of the databases. Journal Impact Factor Eigenfactor http://apps.webofknowledge.com/ http://www.eigenfactor.org (You need to be logged in to Web of Science before using the above URL) The most well known and most established of all the This is a free web resource using data from JCR. The journal ranking metrics is the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) Eigenfactor score is a prestige metric like SCImago which is the average number of citations received in a (as opposed to a popularity metric like JIF) because it year divided by articles published in the journal in the weights articles using similar methods to Google’s page previous 2 years. It is a basic metric which does not rank and not the journal’s size. By this approach, journals adjust for citation behaviour within disciplines and it are considered to be influential if they are cited often by includes self-citations. The JCR allows searching for other influential journals. It also adjusts for differences in individual journals and comparing journals by subject citation patterns among disciplines. The score is based category. A range of metrics is provided for each journal on 5 years of data and is a measure of the total influence including a 2 and 5 year impact factor. The Eigenfactor that a journal provides, rather than a measure of is also listed for ease of comparison. influence per article. The Article Influence (AI) score is also available and is more directly comparable to the JIF. Journal Rank Indicator SNIP (Source Normalized http://www.scimagojr.com/ Impact per Paper) http://www.journalindicators.com/ This is a free web based resource using data from Developed in 2009, SNIP measures contextual citation Elsevier’s Scopus database to provide journal metrics impact by weighting citations based on the total number and statistical data. SCImago Journal Rank Indicator of citations in a subject field. The impact of a single (SJR) is much like the JIF in principle, but the SJR citation is given higher value in subject areas where metric varies from the JIF in that it takes into account the citations are less likely, and vice versa. Unlike the JIF, prestige of the citing publication. It also takes into SNIP corrects for differences in citation practices account citations from the previous 3 years (whereas JIF between scientific fields, thereby allowing for more looks at the past 2 years). It allows searching for accurate between field comparisons of citation impact. individual journals and comparing journals by discipline. The Journal indicators use Scopus data (again covering 3 Analysis only goes back to 1996 as this is the limit of years of data) and are updated twice a year. This Scopus data but it is based on a larger pool of journal resource is freely available. titles than JCR. It also does not include self-citations in its calculations unlike JIF. Images are used with permission 88_1716 November 2019 This leaflet is available in other formats on request. Other Measures Authors from subjects which do not Ulrich’s periodicals directory (accessible as Ulrichsweb via have journal rankings can consider Library Search) can be used to find journals by title. A referee’s other criteria when choosing where to shirt symbol next to the title indicates that the journal is peer publish. reviewed. If there is no shirt, check the journal’s homepage for type of journal (scholarly/ further information. professional) European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social the journal’s aims and scope Sciences Plus (ERIH) http://erihplus.nsd.no/ aims to enhance a high status editorial board the global visibility of high quality research in the humanities and influential in its field social sciences across Europe. indexed in key databases Journal Subject Listings – Some subject areas provide listings high circulation count of top journals maintained by their professional body, for example, how many articles per year Association of Business Schools (ABS) Journal Lists for published Academic Journal Guide. Limitations Journal rankings are not appropriate for all subject areas. Arts and Humanities subjects tend to publish more in books and some subjects publish more in conference proceedings, making journal rankings less meaningful. Journal ranking tools can usually only be compared within subject areas or disciplines because the nature of publishing and citing research varies hugely between subject areas. Different ranking tools use different metrics and have different journal coverage, so comparison is not advised. No current ranking tools adequately categorise multi-disciplinary journals. Due to the time lag involved in processing the citation information (for example, JCR publishes the previous years’ data in June) new and emerging journals are not recognised as having a journal ranking until they have been established for several years. Sources of further information Skills Plus http://northumbria.ac.uk/skillsplus – Further presentations and helpguides are available. My Research Impact (MyRI) http://myri.conul.ie/ – A collaborative project of three Irish academic libraries producing a set of materials to support bibliometrics training and contains worksheets, videos and presentations. CiteScore https://www.scopus.com/sources – Contains articles and information on SJR and SNIP. For further information, there are journals which publish large numbers of articles on the study of bibliometrics and citation analysis. For example, Scientometrics, Journal of Informetrics, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology and Online Information Review. 88_1716 November 2019 This leaflet is available in other formats on request. .