How To Find Impact Factor Of A Journal In Scopus

Measuring a journal's affect

Periodical-level metrics

Metrics have become a fact of life in many - if not all - fields of enquiry and scholarship. In an age of information abundance (often termed 'information overload'), having a shorthand for the signals for where in the bounding main of published literature to focus our limited attention has become increasingly of import.

Research metrics are sometimes controversial, especially when in popular usage they become proxies for multidimensional concepts such as research quality or bear on. Each metric may offer a different emphasis based on its underlying data source, method of adding, or context of use. For this reason, Elsevier promotes the responsible use of research metrics encapsulated in ii "aureate rules". Those are: e'er utilise both qualitative and quantitative input for decisions (i.due east. skillful stance alongside metrics), and ever utilise more than one research metric as the quantitative input. This 2d rule acknowledges that performance cannot be expressed by any single metric, every bit well equally the fact that all metrics have specific strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, using multiple complementary metrics can help to provide a more than consummate picture and reflect dissimilar aspects of enquiry productivity and touch on in the final assessment.

On this page nosotros introduce some of the about popular citation-based metrics employed at the journal level. Where available, they are featured in the "Journal Insights" section on Elsevier periodical homepages (for example), which links through to an fifty-fifty richer set of indicators on the Journal Insights homepage (for instance).

CiteScore metrics

CiteScore metrics are a suite of indicators calculated from information in Scopus, the earth'south leading abstruse and commendation database of peer-reviewed literature.

Calculating the CiteScore is based on the number of citations to documents (articles, reviews, conference papers, volume chapters, and data papers) by a journal over four years, divided by the number of the same certificate types indexed in Scopus and published in those same iv years. For more details, meet this FAQ.

CiteScore is calculated for the current year on a monthly footing until it is stock-still as a permanent value in May the following year, permitting a real-time view on how the metric builds as citations accrue. Once fixed, the other CiteScore metrics are also computed and contextualise this score with rankings and other indicators to let comparison.

CiteScore methodology visual

CiteScore metrics are:

Electric current: A monthly CiteScore Tracker keeps y'all up-to-date almost latest progression towards the side by side annual value, which makes adjacent CiteScore more predictable.
Comprehensive: Based on Scopus, the leading scientific commendation database.
Articulate: Values are transparent and reproducible to individual articles in Scopus.

The scores and underlying data for nearly 26,000 active journals, book series and conference proceedings are freely available at www.scopus.com/sources or via a widget (available on each source page on Scopus.com) or the Scopus API.

CiteScore infographic 2022

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)

SCImago Periodical Rank (SJR) is based on the concept of a transfer of prestige between journals via their citation links. Drawing on a like approach to the Google PageRank algorithm - which assumes that important websites are linked to from other important websites - SJR weights each incoming citation to a periodical by the SJR of the citing journal, with a citation from a high-SJR source counting for more than than a citation from a low-SJR source. Like CiteScore, SJR accounts for periodical size by averaging across recent publications and is calculated annually. SJR is as well powered by Scopus data and is freely bachelor aslope CiteScore at www.scopus.com/sources.

Source Normalized Bear on per Paper (SNIP)

Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) is a sophisticated metric that intrinsically accounts for field-specific differences in citation practices. It does so past comparing each periodical's citations per publication with the citation potential of its field, defined every bit the prepare of publications citing that journal. SNIP therefore measures contextual citation impact and enables direct comparison of journals in different discipline fields, since the value of a single citation is greater for journals in fields where citations are less probable, and vice versa. SNIP is calculated annually from Scopus data and is freely available alongside CiteScore and SJR at www.scopus.com/sources.

Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

Journal Bear on Factor (JIF) is calculated by Clarivate Analytics as the average of the sum of the citations received in a given year to a journal'due south previous two years of publications (linked to the journal, but not necessarily to specific publications) divided by the sum of "citable" publications in the previous two years. Owing to the manner in which citations are counted in the numerator and the subjectivity of what constitutes a "citable particular" in the denominator, JIF has received sustained criticism for many years for its lack of transparency and reproducibility and the potential for manipulation of the metric. Available for just 11,785 journals (Science Commendation Alphabetize Expanded plus Social Sciences Citation Index, per December 2022), JIF is based on an excerpt of Clarivate'due south Web of Science database, and includes citations that could not be linked to specific manufactures in the journal, and then-called unlinked citations.

h-index

Although originally conceived as an author-level metric, the h-index (and some of its numerous variants) have come to be applied to higher-order aggregations of research publications, including journals. A composite of productivity and citation touch, h-index is divers as the greatest number of publications h for which the count of lifetime citations is greater than or equal to h. Beingness bound at the upper limit only by full productivity, h-alphabetize favours older and more productive authors and journals. As h-alphabetize can simply ever rise, it is likewise insensitive to recent changes in operation. Finally, the ease of increasing h-index does not scale linearly: an author with an h-index of ii needs only publish a 3rd paper and have all three of them cited at least 3 times to rise to an h-index of 3; an writer with an h-index of 44 must publish a 45th paper and have it and all the other accomplish 45 citations each before progressing to an h-index of 45. h-index is therefore of limited usefulness to distinguish between authors, since about have unmarried-digit h-indexes.