What are Journal Metrics?
Journal metrics, like Impact Factor, are used to find citation trends and patterns within journals and subject fields. Journal metrics can be used to:
- evaluate the impact of a journal within its field
- select highly-cited journals for manuscript submission
- assist in determining an author's impact
Determining a Journal's Impact
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowScopus provides three metrics for journals: CiteScore, SJR, and SNIP. Click on "Sources" and search by publisher, title, ISSN, or subject, then click on the journal title to see the source details and metrics. Use the "Compare Sources" option to compare the metrics of up to 10 journals.
- Journal Citation Reports or JCR Web This link opens in a new windowThe official source for Journal Impact Factors™, based on the Web of Science Core Collection. You must create a Web of Science account in order to search JCR.
- SciVal This link opens in a new windowNB: All users need to register with a username and password.
A web-based analytics solution that provides comprehensive access to the research performance of over 14,000 research institutions and their associated researchers from 230 nations worldwide, SciVal allows users to visualize research performance, benchmark relative to peers, develop strategic partnerships, and identify and analyze new, emerging research trends, and create uniquely tailored reports.
- Using JCRsA guide developed by UI's Hardin Library for using JCRs.
- Scimago Journal Rank (SJR)This tool uses Scopus journal information to allow users to search and analyze journal and country rankings.
- EigenfactorScientific journals are rated by the number of incoming citations, where citations from more highly ranked journals make a greater contribution to the eigenfactor than citations from more poorly ranked journals. The score was developed at the University of Washington by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom.
- ERIH PLUSERIH PLUS is an academic journal index for the HSS (Humanities and Social Sciences) society in Europe.
- Google Scholar MetricsExplore publications by subcategories. Journals are ordered by their five-year-h-index and h-median metrics.
- Top 100 PublicationsAccording to Google Scholar Metrics.
- Harzing's Publish or PerishThe software program uses Google Scholar to retrieve and analyze academic citations to present statistics on citations, journal metrics, and author metrics.
- CWTS Journal IndicatorsProvides free access to bibliometric indicators on scientific journals.
Understanding Journal Acceptance Rates
Identifying the acceptance rates of journals can be very helpful when deciding where to publish your research and throughout the promotion and tenure process. Each journal publication has their own way of calculating the acceptance rate, whether it uses the total number of manuscripts received or total number of manuscripts reviewed by editors. No matter what the method may be, journal publications with low acceptance rates are considered to be more prestigious.
Methods of locating a journal's acceptance rate:
- Sometimes journals will include this data in the information for authors page of websites or print publications
- Professional societies or associations may share the acceptance rates of journals within their discipline
- Contact the editor of the journal for the specific acceptance rate