Finding Impact Factors: Journal Citation Reports latest edition
Journal citation reports can be used to find out the impact factor for a journal. This is a useful way of finding quality journals where your article is more likely to be cited (although it only covers science and social sciences). Our brief guide will get you started and you can find some training videos on the Thomson web site.
What’s new?
The latest edition has just been released, covering journal analysis for2014. 272 new journals have been added. There are some new metrics and an open access filter allowing people to look specifically at open access journals.
Once you have a list of the journals for your subject you can select the open access option to see which are the best performing open access journals for your area.
Want to know more?
Here are a few links to information to give you a flavour of the issues surrounding JCR and Impact Factors:
- http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/06/18/2014-journal-impact-factors/ – brief description of some of the metrics in JCR. The online help in Web of Science also has descriptions of all the measures used.
- Casting a wide net: the journal impact factor numerator / Stephen C. Hubbard, Marie McVeigh – detailed article on creating the impact factor by some of the people behind it.
- http://www.journalmetrics.com/faq.php – rival metrics to the Impact factor based on Scopus data.
- http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/06/record-number-of-journals-banned-for-boosting-impact-factor-with-self-citations.html – attempts to fix the impact factor.
- http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2014/08/21/the-mystery-of-a-partial-impact-factor/ – new journal titles and the impact factor.
- http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/05/16/elite-journals-are-losing-their-position-of-privilege/ – opinion piece on the decline in the impact factor as a measure.
Need help
If you need help using Journal Citation Reports contact your subject librarian or iss-research@swansea.ac.uk
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