What’s the ranking of journal X? This is a question that rises for most research students. They often hear that the requirement for their graduation is publishing a paper in Q1 journals. This article shows you how to find the impact factor and ranking of a journal. Specifically, we are talking about Web of Science and Scopus databases. If you are not familiar with these databases, please refer to this article.
Usually, journals mention their impact factor on their website. But, it’s more accurate to check the Web of Science or Scopus. Plus, you get lots of information than just the impact factor in the Web of Science or Scopus.
Ranking in The Web of Science
Let’s start with the Web of Science database. In order to access the database, you need to have an account. Most likely, your institution gives you such access. You need to connect to the database using your institution’s IP address, either from inside the institute or using a VPN service that gives you your institution’s IP address.
The Web of Science has many services. One of them is called InCites Journal Citation Reports or JCR ranking, which is the one we’re going to use. You can access it here. Figure 1 shows the home page of JCR.
Figure 1. Web of Science Journal Citation Reports
We assume that you have the name of the journal you want to search. Here, we consider “Scientometrics” journal as an example. As you start typing, suggestions appear for you. Find the journal you’re looking for and select it. If the journal doesn’t appear, that means it’s not indexed in the Web of Science. Be careful of the leading and trailing spaces, since that affects the suggestions. It is also possible to type a keyword, for example “physics” and see list of journals containing that keyword. It’s a good option if you’re looking for a targeted journal. In the next page, you see the results as shown in Figure 2.
See Also
What they are and how to understand them – SERVSIGResearch Guides: Measuring Your Scholarly Impact: Journal Rankings & EvaluationGuide to Journal Rankings: What are Quartiles – Q1, Q2, Q3 & Q4 Journal - Editage USA Official BlogWhat are the different classifications followed by journals? – Charlesworth Author Services