Research Guides
What are journal-level metrics? Why track at this level?
Journal-level metrics measure the impact, reach, or prestige of a journal. Journal-level metrics are designed to measure the aggregate impact of publication as a whole and should not be used as proxy metrics for authors who publish in a particular journal.
Examples of journal metrics
The library's main sources for citation metrics are Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports.
Google Scholar records citation data and metrics at the article, author, and journal level. The primary journal-level metric that Google Scholar reports is the h5-index (a variation on the h-index using publications from the last five years only). Google Scholar Metrics ranks top publications by h5-index within selected language and field.
| Impact Factor | Additional JCR Metrics | Acceptance Rate | H-index | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What does it measure? | How frequently recent articles in a journal are cited | A variety of metrics based on Web of Science Citation Data | A journal's selectivity | A journal's influence that accounts for productivity and impact (also used for author-level metrics) |
| How is it calculated? | The number of citations received in the current year by articles published in the last two years divided by the citable articles published in the past two years | See the Additional JCR Metrics page for details on each metric | The percentage of submitted articles a journal accepts for publication | Publications are listed by number of citations in descending order. The value h is equal to the number of h papers that have h or more citations. |
| Where do I get it? | Journal Citation Reports | Journal Citation Reports | MLA Directory of Periodicals and APA Journal Statistics and Operations Data | Google Scholar, Web of Science (Note: Do not compare h-indexes derived from different sources.) |