Journal metrics are useful for comparing and evaluating the quality of journals. They help identify suitable journals for publishing and support grant and promotion applications.
Journal metrics are published yearly based on the average amount of citations received by all articles within a journal in the proceeding years. This provides an indication of the overall citation performance of the journal.
The availability of specific journal metrics will depend on where the journal is indexed. Most journal metrics are calculated for journals that are indexed in either Scopus or specific indices within Web of Science. Some metrics will only apply to Scopus-indexed journals, and some will only apply to Web of Science-indexed journals.
When using journal metrics, it is also essential that disciplinary differences are taken into account. There are two major factors to consider:
(1) number of journals indexed in a database source per discipline and
(2) citation behaviour varies between disciplines. These two factors can represent a three-fold difference between STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine) and HASS (Humanities and Social Sciences) disciplines. This is a reflection of disciplinary differences, not academic performance.
Two landmark documents strongly recommend that journal metrics are not used for measuring the quality of individual research articles or as a direct measure of research performance:
- The San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment (DORA) 2012 statement recommends that journal-based metrics should not be used as a proxy for assessing the research quality of articles or researchers, or play a role in hiring or promotions.
- An outcome of The Metric Tide report, a review of the role of metrics in research assessment and management based on data from the UK 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), recommends that a variety of journal-based metrics rather than a single journal metric should be used to provide a richer view of performance. The report also encourages a shift towards article-level metrics, to enable the academic quality of individual articles to be assessed rather than using journal-level metrics as a proxy of academic quality.
Considerations:
- It's important to note that the overall citation performance of a journal doesn't necessarily reflect the quality or performance of its individual articles.
- An article may be published in a journal with a very high rank, but not have received any citations. Even the most prestigious journals in the world contain publications that have never been cited.
- An article may be very influential and have received many citations, but not be published in a journal with a high rank. Some journals which do not have high-ranking metrics still contain very highly cited publications.
- Metrics and rankings can vary depending on the source and its methodology, as well as which journals are indexed.
- Different disciplines may accrue citations at different rates and amounts.
- Not every journal will have metrics available, particularly if it's not indexed by Scopus or Web of Science.
