Click on each item for explanations and suggested tools. * = resources available to current JMU users only. Note that JMU does not subscribe to Journal Citation Reports.
Impact Factor | Eigenfactor | SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) | h-Index | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Measures | Relative impact using proxy of frequency with which the journal's "average article" has been cited in 5 year period. | Relative importance according to a stoichiometric estimate of time researchers spent reading the journal. | Prestige metric based on influence of citing journals for all articles in the selected journal in 3 previous years. | Productivity (papers published) and citation impact over a specified number of years. |
Calculation | X / Y where: X = cites in a given year to articles published in 2 previous years, and Y = number of articles published in 2 previous years (details). |
I / N where: I = importance of citation based on influence of the citing journal, calculated by a network theory-derived algorithm, and N = total number of citations appearing in the citing journal (details). |
P / C where: P= size-dependent metric of an whole journal’s prestige, calculated using network theory elements, and C= ratio of citable documents each journal has relative to the total documents in all Scopus journals (details). |
Largest number h of a journal’s articles that have received h or more citations over the last 5 years. |
Pros | -Most widely used & accepted journal metric. -Easy to understand. |
-Accounts for quality of citing publication & varied citation rates across disciplines. -Excludes self-citations. |
-Difficult to manipulate the data. -Journal size-independent. -Only includes peer-reviewed articles, reviews, and conference papers. |
-Outliers discounted. -Easy to understand. -Publication period easily adjusted. |
Cons | -Based on mean (actual citation distributions very skewed). -Counts self-citations. -Counts non-peer-reviewed citations (e.g. editorials). -Cross-discipline comparison difficult. |
-Calculation difficult to understand. -Less widely used than Impact Factor. -Counts non-peer-reviewed citations. -Likely to increase with increase in journal size. -Only includes journals in Journal Citation Reports. |
-Calculation difficult to understand. Less widely used than Impact Factor. -Cross-discipline comparison difficult. Only includes journals in Scopus.* |
-Less widely used than Impact Factor. -Cross-discipline comparison difficult. -Likely to increase with increase in journal size. |
Where to find it | Journal Citation Reports (JMU does not have access to this resource) | Journal Citation Reports or Eigenfactor.org | Scopus,* SCImago Journal & Country Rank, or JournalMetrics.com (Elsevier) | Google Scholar Metrics, Scopus,* or SCImago Journal & Country Rank (NOTE: time frames differ.) |