Journal metrics are used to measure the impact of articles published in a journal.
The databases and tools below allow you to look up journals and view a variety of metrics. You can also view journals within a subject category, ranked by specific metrics.
Journal Impact Factor
Citations to articles from the most recent two full years, divided by the total number of articles from the most recent two full years. "How much is this journal being cited during the most recent two full years?"
5-Year Journal Impact Factor
Citations to articles from the most recent five full years, divided by the total number of articles from the most recent five full years. "How much is this journal being cited during the most recent five full years?"
Journal Immediacy Index
Citations to articles from the current year, divided by the total number of articles from the current year. "How much is this journal being cited during the current year?"
Journal Cited Half-Life
For the current Journal Citation Reports year, the median age of journal articles cited. "What is the duration of citation to articles in this journal?"
Eigenfactor
Similar to the 5-Year Journal Impact Factor, but weeds out journal self-citations. It also, unlike the Journal Citation Reports impact factor, cuts across both the hard sciences and the social sciences.
SJR - SCImage Journal Rank
This metric doesn't consider all citations of equal weight; the prestige of the citing journal is taken into account. SJR measures a journal’s impact by taking the average number of weighted citations received in the selected year by the documents published in the journal in the three previous years.
h5-index
This metric is based on the articles published by a journal over 5 calendar years. h is the largest number of articles that have each been cited h times. A journal with an h5-index of 43 has published, within a 5-year period, 43 articles that each have 43 or more citations.
Look up the journal by title in a few sources. Different sources may use different metrics.
Example: Journal of Management (ISSN 1557-1211)
Go to: Journal Citation Reports
Go to: SCIMago Journal Search
You can also check the journal's website to see if it includes any metrics.
The website for Journal of Management identifies the journal's two year and five year impact factors, as well as rankings, all drawn from Journal Citation Reports.
Different sources rank journals using a variety of metrics, Impact Factor being one of the most common.
Example: Top journals in the field of nursing
Go to: Journal Citation Reports
Journal Citation Reports is the only source for the Impact Factor metric.
Go to: Google Scholar Metrics
Publishers operating in bad faith exploit the scholarly publishing process in order to make a profit, charging author fees but failing to provide promised peer review or editorial services.
The Library's Predatory Publishing guide provides criteria and checklists to help you avoid predatory journals and conferences.
