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Choosing Where To Publish Your Research: Journal Metrics

This guide discusses factors that researchers should consider when evaluating journals and choosing where to submit their manuscript.ir research products

What are journal metrics?

Journal metrics are calculations that look to measure the impact of specific journals. Although there are a variety of journal metrics, each with different formulas and criteria, the term "impact" generally refers to how often articles from a given journal get cited. Therefore, saying that a journal has high impact in its field means that its content is cited frequently in comparison to other journals in the same area of study.

Researchers often seek to publish their studies in high impact journals. There are several reasons for this:

  • It gives them prestige
  • It gives them increased visibility
  • It gives them a better chance of getting cited
  • It can help them obtain a promotion or tenure

This "Journal Metrics" section has four subsections. In the first two, we take a look at a couple of the most referenced journal metrics: Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and CiteScore. After this, we discuss other metrics that are used to evaluate academic journals, such as h-index, g-index, Eigenfactor and Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP). In the last subsection, we cover additional sources you can use to find journal metrics.

To visit the different subsections, you can follow the links provided below. You can also hover over the "Journal Metrics" tab found above and select the subsection you wish to view.