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Scholarly Impact

Journal Metrics

What

Journal metrics are a broad indicator of the general visibility of a journal or the importance of a particular journal within a field. Journal metrics generally take into account the number of articles published in a specific journal per year and the number of citations to articles published in that journal. While journal metrics can reveal some information, researchers and scholars in a given discipline will have the best sense of the top journals in their field.

Applications

  • Journal Impact Factor (JIF) uses citation data from Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics to provide impact factors and rankings for many journals in the social and life sciences. JIF is a way to measure the relative impact of a particular journal within its field, based on the frequency with which the 'average article' in a journal has been cited in a particular year or other defined time period using data from Journal Citation Reports (JCR). JIF is the most widely used journal level metric. 

  • CiteScore uses citation data from Scopus and is based on a three-year citation window. CiteScore calculates the average number of citations received in a calendar year by all items published in a given journal in the preceding three years. 

  • SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) uses citation data from Scopus and is based on a three-year citation window. SJR is a prestige metric based on the idea that ‘all citations are not created equal’. With SJR, the subject field, quality and reputation of the journal has a direct effect on the value of a citation.

  • Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) uses citation data from Scopus and is based on a three-year citation window. SNIP measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field. The impact of a single citation is given higher value in subject areas where citations are less likely, and vice versa.

  • Google Scholar Metrics uses citation data from Google Scholar to generate a top 100 list of journals for particular subject fields ranked using their 5-year h-index. Sections on Metrics, Coverage, and Inclusion tell you more about how the rankings were derived.

  • Eigenfactor uses citation data from Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics and is based on a five-year citation window. A journal’s Eigenfactor score is measured as its importance to the scientific community, and it is intended to reflect the influence and prestige of journals. The Eigenfactor was created to help capture the value of publication output vs. journal quality (i.e. the value of a single publication in a major journal vs. many publications in minor journals).

  • Article Influence Score uses citation data from Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics and is based on a five-year citation window. It measures the average influence, per article, of the papers published in a journal and is calculated by dividing a journal’s Eigenfactor by the number of articles published in the journal.

Considerations

  • The average citation level of a journal is an extremely limited indicator, and is not a replacement for expert, qualitative assessment of the journal.
  • Journal metrics do not reveal information about the impact of the researcher or particular article, and therefore should not be used as a measure of a researcher's impact.
  • No individual journal metric can be used to compare journals across disciplines. 
  • Many factors can influence citation rates such as language, journal history, publication schedule, and subject specialty and scope. For instance, many of the journals in Web of Science and Scopus are English-language and from North America, Western Europe and Australia, which can influence a journal’s impact factor. 
  • Many articles published in "high impact" journals can receive very few or, in some cases, no citations at all.