Impact Factors

Impact Factor

Publishing in high-impact journals can be important in establishing your status in your field. 

How do I access Impact Factors?

Impact factor tables are available through the Journal Citation Reports database via the Web of Knowledge.

A journal's impact factor is based on how often articles published in that journal during the previous two years were cited by articles published in the most recent year for which JCR data is available.  The impact factor (IF) reflects the average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal.  Therefore a journal with a high impact factor indicates that articles in that journal have been cited frequently by other articles. This can be an indication of how prestigious a journal is in its field.

Note: For many disciplines, JCR has limited coverage and does not include Humanities journals.

A brief tutorial on impact factors and a class recording on using Journal Citations Reports are available from Thomson Reuters at http://wokinfo.com/training_support/training/journal-citation-reports/

See “The Thomson Reuters Impact Factor essay” for further information.

Scopus Journal Analyzer

Scopus Journal Analyzer is another tool that allows you to compare journals using its own journal ranking metrics.  The SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) metric values journal citations based on the subject field, and the quality and reputation of the journal. The Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) journal metric graph shows contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in given subject area.

Both SJR and SNIP are also available at http://www.journalmetrics.com/which allows you to search the entire collection of journals covered by Scopus along with their SNIP and SJR metrics going back to 2007.

View a webinar presentation by Elsevier on the impact factor, Eigenfactor, SJR, SNIP and h-index titled: The impact factor and other bibliometric indicators

In addition to the tools within Scopus, Elsevier also produce The SCImago Journal & Country Rank, a portal that allows journals to be ranked by subject area and by country developed from the information contained in the Scopus database.

Other journal ranking tools

See Module 3 of the MyRI tutorial, Journal Ranking and Analysis, for more information on JCR, Scopus tools and other emerging journal ranking tools.

Discipline specific journal ranking tools

The following resources may also be useful for specific disciplines. 

Humanities Journal Rankings

European Science Foundation's subgroup for the Humanities journal rankings

ABS Journal Quality Guide

Compiled by the Association of Business Schools

Harzing.com - Journal Quality List

Compiles rankings of journals from various sources in the areas of Economics, Finance, Accounting, Management, and Marketing.

JANE (Journal Author Name Estimator)

A resource for Health Sciences 

Excellence in Research for  Australia (ERA)

Some disciplines refer to this list of journals eligible for inclusion in the ERA which is maintained by the Australian Research Council.