Thursday, 15 August 2013

Journal Impact Metrics for Dummies...

Before I even start -  Journal level metrics are not an accurate measure of journal quality.
What they, are, though, is a useful measure of journal impact and prestige... so we need to take them into account when considering publishing anything.



JIF - Journal Impact Factor – “measures” how often articles in journals are cited.

Or, the average number of citations in that year that a paper published in a particular journal in the previous two years receives.

E.g. the 2010 IF is the average number of citations received in 2010 for 2008 and 2009 papers
  • JIF  can be found using Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports

 
SNIP - Source Normalised Impact per Paper – “measures” contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field


Citation potential is shown to vary not only between subject categories or disciplines but also between different “types” of journals within the same subject category.

E.g. basic journals vs. applied/clinical journals
  • SNIP can be found using Scopus Journal Analyzer

And my personal favourite...
SJR - Scientific Journal Ranking– “measures” the prestige of a journal based on which journals have cited from it, and which journals it cites (and how many times this occurs)


“…based on the transfer of prestige from a journal to another one; such prestige is transferred through the references that a journal do to the rest of the journals and to itself.”


Stay tuned for more Basic Bibliometrics for Librarians! Baby-steps, baby-steps...

Next post... "H-index for Dummies"

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