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The impact factor is a formal metric used for ranking, evaluating, and comparing academic journals based on the number of citations their published articles receive.
It is calculated by dividing the number of citations by the number of all articles published in the journal during the preceding two years.
A journal's impact factor metric can be found in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database, which uses citation data from the Web of Science database.
To determine an academic journal's ranking, you can consult the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database, which provides ranking information derived from the impact factors and citation data. Alternatively, a journal's ranking based on the Scopus database can be found within the Scopus database itself.
The SJR metric, an alternative to the Impact Factor (IF) metric, is based on citation data in the Scopus database. It can be found on the SJR (Scimago Journal Ranking) website.
The CiteScore metric is based on the Scopus database. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations received by the number of articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters, and data papers published in the previous four years. This metric can be found in the Scopus database.
The Source Normalized Impact Per Paper (SNIP) metric evaluates the impact of an article within a journal, with an emphasis on the specific subject field. It accounts for specific differences in citation patterns across various disciplines. The calculation emphasizes the average citations of the article in relation to the total citations in a specific subject field. This metric can be found in the Scopus database.
Journal quartile rankings can be found in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and the SJR (Scimago Journal Ranking) databases. Note that there may be differences between the databases, and rankings can vary across research disciplines.
You should refer to the ranking according to the research field of the published study.
Rankings change annually based on the ratio of citations counts to the number of publications in that particular journal for the given year.
It is customary to refer to the metric for the year of publication.
Many journals are covered by both databases, but not all. The JCR is based on the Web of Science data and is particularly comprehensive for the natural sciences, while Scopus has broader coverage including more engineering and social science journals.
The differences in rankings arise because each database uses distinct methods for calculating metrics.
You can search the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and Scimago Journal Ranking (SJR) databases by research category, examine the list of journals, and review their respective rankings in that category.
You can look at the journal's percentile data. If it is 95% or higher, it is classified in the top 5%. Percentile rankings can be found in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) or Scopus.
This information can be found in the Haifa University’s Index to Hebrew Periodicals (IHP) under the journal information tab. Within the classification of the journal, there is information specifying whether it is a trade journal or a research journal.
Consult the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which provides a list of approved Open Access publishers and journals. Additionally, you can use UlrichsWeb, a database to search for trustworthy academic journals.