LibGuides: Journal Evaluation: Metrics

Controversy

Things to Consider:

Research assessment is still debated
Certain kinds of articles (example: review articles) tend to be cited more which will impact results
Self-citing will also impact results
Metrics aren't the same across disciplines - some disciplines have less emphasis on publishing in journals
Nontraditional impact is not really considered - book chapters, conferences, etc.
Editorial policies can impact results
Heavy emphasis on US journals
Quality is more than just number of citations

Journal Impact Factor

What is it?
A journal metric that measures the average of how many times articles from a journal were cited.

How is it calculated?
(Number of times articles published in a two year period were cited in indexed journals) divided by (Total number of "citable items" published during that same time period)

Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
Search for your journal by title to find the score

Journal Citation Reports: Learn the Basics - Clarivate LibGuide
More information including the JIF trend
Web of Science Journal Evaluation Process and Selection Criteria

Eigenfactor

What is it?
A journal metric that measures the average of how many times articles from a journal were cited, but removes self-citations (times article cites another article from the same journal) and scales the score.

How is it calculated?
It is calculated by eigenfactor.org.

Eigenfactor
Learn about the project here.
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The website includes an interactive mapping function that shows the relationship of branches of science to each other based on the size of the field and the citations generated by the journals of the field. Rather than the "soft" categories used in Journal Citation Reports, where a journal may be located in one or more categories, Eigenfactor uses a hard category where a journal can only fit in one discipline.
Eigenfactor Journal Search
Search for your journal by title to find the score

Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
Search for your journal by title to find the score

More Metrics

Journal rankings can be very controversial and each resource has pros and cons to their use. Here are few more tools that might come in handy.

Scimago Journal and Country Rank
Includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database. These indicators could be used to assess and analyze scientific domains.
Scopus - Sources (CiteScore)
Data is produced for journals, conference proceedings, and book series covered by Scopus. NOTE: CiteScore is produced by Elsevier, who publishes many high-impact journals and has the potential ability to insert bias in the results.
Journal Quality List
Compiled Dr. Anne-Wil Harzing, creator of the Publish or Perish (PoP) software, this is a collation of journal rankings from a variety of sources.
USE ME Google Scholar
See the most heavily cited articles in a specific publication (according to Google Scholar) and to see the median times cited for their articles.

h-index

What is it?
A metric that attempts to measure the productivity and impact of an author. Also called Hirsch index.

How is it calculated?
A list of publications by an author is created and sorted in descending order by number of times cited. The h number is the number of publications that are cited more than or equal to that number.

Example:
This author would have an h factor of 2

Example of how to figure out the h score
Paper number	Publication Title	Time Cited
1	Example Paper 1	37
2	Example Paper 3	3
3	Example Paper 2	1

Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window
Find the score in the Citation Report of an author

Google Scholar
Find the score in the author profile
An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output
The h-index was developed by J.E. Hirsch and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102 (46): 16569-16572 November 15 2005.

Altmetrics

What is it?
A metric to score how much attention an item has received - could be from social media, news sources, etc.

How is it scored?
It is calculated based on the company.

Altmetric
This is a commercial provider of altmetrics data - not to be confused with altmetrics themselves.
Impact Story
Another company to help track altmetrics
What are Altmetrics - University of Pittsburgh

More on Metrics

Find more information on bibliometrics - measuring research impact.