Library: Journal Evaluation for Authors: Journal Impact

How Can I Assess Journal Impact?

Different measures are used to assess the quality and impact of a journal, which are one consideration when deciding where to publish.

	Impact Factor (IF)	Eigenfactor	SCImago Journal Ranking (SJR)	Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP)
Measure of...	Frequency with which the 'average article' in a journal has been cited in a defined time period	Overall value provided by all articles published in a a journal in 1 year.	Number of citations received by a journal and the importance of the journals they came from	Weights citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field
Calculation	Impact Factor = A/B A: Number of citations in the current year to items published in the journal in the previous 2 years B: Total number of articles published in the journal in the previous two years	Citations from high-quality journals are weighted more than citations from lesser known journals	Citations from more prestigious journals (higher SJR) weighted more than citations from less prestigious journals (lower SJR)	Citations from subject fields in which citations are less likely are weighted more
Can it be used to compare journals from different disciplines?	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Where can I get it?	At UW-Madison Libraries in the Journal Citation Reports. Or sometimes it is listed on the journal webpage or publisher page. Google the name of the journal and impact factor to see if it's listed.	Eigenfactor.org	SCImago Journal Rank	CWTS Journal Indicators

Google Scholar Top Publications List
List of the top 100 publications according to the h5-index (the h-index for articles published in the last 5 years). Top 20 lists available for several disciplines.
Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)
If you are considering publishing in an open access journal, then the publisher of the journal should be on the OASPA membership list.
Beall's List of Predatory Publishers
List of potential, possible or probable predatory scholarly open access publishers. If you are considering publishing in an open access journal, then the publisher of that journal should NOT be on this list.