Journal ranking is widely used in academic circles in the evaluation of an
academic journal
An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...
's impact and quality. Journal rankings are intended to reflect the place of a journal within its field, the relative difficulty of being published in that journal, and the prestige associated with it. They have been introduced as official research evaluation tools in several countries.
Measures
Traditionally, journal ranking "measures" or evaluations have been provided simply through institutional lists established by academic leaders or through a committee vote. These approaches have been notoriously politicized and inaccurate reflections of actual prestige and quality, as they would often reflect the biases and personal career objectives of those involved in ranking the journals; also causing the problem of highly disparate evaluations across institutions.
[ Also, see YouTube video narrative of this paper at: ] Consequently, many institutions have required external sources of evaluation of journal quality. The traditional approach here has been through surveys of leading academics in a given field, but this approach too has potential for bias, though not as profound as that seen with institution-generated lists. Consequently, governments, institutions, and leaders in
scientometric
Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of informetrics. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academi ...
research have turned to a litany of observed bibliometric measures on the journal level that can be used as surrogates for quality and thus eliminate the need for subjective assessment.
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Consequently, several journal-level metrics have been proposed, most citation-based:
* ]Impact factor
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ...
and CiteScore – reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals.
* SCImago Journal Rank
The SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator is a measure of the prestige of scholarly journals that accounts for both the number of citations received by a journal and the prestige of the journals where the citations come from.
Rationale
Citati ...
– a measure of scientific influence of scholarly journals that accounts for both the number of citations received by a journal and the importance or prestige of the journals where such citations come from.
* ''h''-index – usually used as a measure of scientific productivity and the scientific impact of an individual scientist, but can also be used to rank journals.
** h5-index – this metric, calculated and released by Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...
, is based on the h-index
The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...
of all articles published in a given journal in the last five years.
* Expert survey – a score reflecting the overall quality or contribution of a journal is based on the results of the survey of active field researchers, practitioners and students (i.e., actual journal contributors or readers), who rank each journal based on specific criteria.
* Publication power approach (PPA) – the ranking position of each journal is based on the actual publishing behavior of leading tenured academics over an extended time period. As such, the journal's ranking position reflects the frequency at which these scholars published their articles in this journal.
* Altmetrics
In scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics are non-traditional bibliometrics proposed as an alternative or complement to more traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and ''h''-index. The term altmetrics was proposed in ...
– rate journals based on scholarly references added to academic social media sites.
* diamScore – a measure of scientific influence of academic journals based on recursive citation weighting and the pairwise comparisons between journals.
* Source normalized impact per paper (SNIP) – a factor released in 2012 by Elsevier
Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...
based on Scopus
Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-l ...
to estimate impact. The measure is calculated as SNIP=RIP/(R/M), where RIP=raw impact per paper, R = citation potential and M = median database citation potential.
* PageRank – in 1976 a recursive impact factor that gives citations from journals with high impact greater weight than citations from low-impact journals was proposed. Such a recursive impact factor resembles Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
's PageRank
PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. According ...
algorithm, though the original paper uses a "trade balance" approach in which journals score highest when they are often cited but rarely cite other journals; several scholars have proposed related approaches.
** Eigenfactor
The Eigenfactor score, developed by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom at the University of Washington, is a rating of the total importance of a scientific journal. Journals are rated according to the number of incoming citations, with citations from h ...
is another PageRank-type measure of journal influence, with rankings freely available online.
Discussion
Negative consequences of rankings are generally well-documented and relate to the performativity
''Performativity'' is the concept that language can function as a form of social action and have the effect of change. The concept has multiple applications in diverse fields such as anthropology, social and cultural geography, economics, gender st ...
of using journal rankings for performance measurement purposes. Studies of methodological quality and reliability have found that "reliability of published research works in several fields may be decreasing with increasing journal rank", contrary to widespread expectations.
For example, McKinnon (2017) has analyzed how the ABS-AJG ranking, which in spite of its methodological shortcomings is widely accepted in British business schools, has had negative consequences for the transportation and logistics management disciplines. A study published in 2021 compared the Impact Factor, Eigenfactor Score, SCImago Journal & Country Rank and the Source Normalized Impact per Paper, in journals related to Pharmacy, Toxicology and Biochemistry. It discovered there was "a moderate to high and significant correlation" between them.
Thousands of universities and research bodies issued official statements denouncing the idea that research quality can be measured based on the uni-dimensional scale of a journal ranking, most notably by signing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) intends to halt the practice of correlating the journal impact factor to the merits of a specific scientist's contributions. Also according to this statement, this practice creates bias ...
(DORA), which asked "not ouse journal-based metrics ... as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist's contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions". The Community for Responsible Research in Business Management
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
(cRRBM) asks whether "even the academy is being served when faculty members are valued for the quantity and placement of their articles, not for the benefit their research can have for the world".
National rankings
Several national and international rankings of journals exist, e.g.:
* ERA Australia journal lists
Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) is Australia’s national research evaluation framework, developed and administered by the Australian Research Council (ARC). The first full round of ERA occurred in 2010, and subsequent rounds followed ...
Australian Research Council ranking of journals worldwide
* Brazil's Qualis
Qualis is a Brazilian official system with the purpose of classifying scientific production. It is maintained by the Coordenadoria de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), a government agency linked to the Brazilian Ministry o ...
* Colombia's Publindex
The Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation ( es, Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación), also known as Colciencias, is a Colombian government agency that supports fundamental and applied researc ...
* Denmark Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science (2014)
* Finland's Julkaisufoorumi (JUFO) Publication Forum
* Norwegian Scientific Index
CRIStin (Current Research Information System in Norway) is the national research information system of Norway, and is owned by the Royal Ministry of Education and Research. CRIStin documents all scholarly publications by Norwegian researchers, an ...
Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers – Advanced Search
* Germany VHB Index (business)
* France CNRS ranking (economics)
* Italian ANVUR ranking ANVUR Class A journals
* The Chartered Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Guide
* Pakistan List of HEC Recognized Journals
* Indian National Academy of Agricultural Sciences
The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) is a Government of India funded agency, established in 1990, is a research platform in the fields of crop husbandry, animal husbandry, fisheries and agro-forestry. It acts as a research base for ...
NAAS Score of Science Journals (Effective from January 1, 2022)
* Polish ranking of journals
* DHET List of Approved South African Journals
The Department of Higher Education and Training is one of the ministry (government department), departments of the Government of South Africa, South African government. It oversees universities and other post-secondary education in South Africa ...
They have been introduced as official research evaluation tools in several countries.
See also
*
* Journalology
Journalology (also known as publication science) is the scholarly study of all aspects of the academic publishing process. The field seeks to improve the quality of scholarly research by implementing evidence-based practices in academic publishing. ...
References
{{Academic publishing
Academic publishing