Scholarly Impact Metrics

Journal Citation Reports provides a journal's h-index, impact factor, 5-year impact factor, and Eigenfactor, as well as other metrics. It is proprietary in nature (owned by Thomson Reuters). EMU does not subscribe to JCR, but it is available at the University of Michigan. Watch a brief video on JCR to view its features.

A journal's Eigenfactor score measures its importance in its field, but takes into account various factors such as the difference in citation practices of varying disciplines. Like JCR, Eigenfactor only looks at journals in the sciences and some social sciences, but its scores and methodology are open. Its FAQ is necessary reading to interpret the scores.

SCIMago uses data from SCOPUS to provide information about journals, including journal rank by category, a title's h-index, and its citation count. Visitors can see journals by rank and compare journals.

The SNIP indicator is an alternative to the JCR's journal impact factor. Powered by Scopus.

A journal's Impact Factor is a measure of prestige calculated as the ratio of the number of times a journal was cited in the current year and the total number of citable articles in the previous two years. For instance, if a journal has an impact factor of 2, it means that an article published in this journal is, on average, cited twice within a two year period. Impact factor uses Web of Science data and is released once per year.

A journal's Eigenfactor score measures its importance in its field by calculating the ratio of the number of times a journal was cited in the current year with the total number of articles in a 5-year period. The sum of all Eigenfactor scores will equal 100, meaning that a journal with an Eigenfactor score of 1 received 1% of the total influence of all indexed publications.

"A journal's Article Influence score is a measure of the average influence of each of its articles over the first five years after publication...Article Influence scores are normalized so that the mean article in the entire Thomson Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database has an article influence of 1.00." (Eigenfactor.org's FAQ)

"The Immediacy Index is the average number of times an article is cited in the year it is published...The Immediacy Index is calculated by dividing the number of citations to articles published in a given year by the number of articles published in that year."

"The h-index expresses the journal's number of articles (h) that have received at least h citations. It quantifies both journal scientific productivity and scientific impact and it is also applicable to scientists, countries, etc." (From SJR - Help)

"The total number of citations to the journal in the JCR year." (From Journal Citation Reports Help)

"The SJR indicator measures the scientific influence of the average article in a journal, it expresses how central to the global scientific discussion an average article of the journal is." (From SCImago Journal and Country Rank)