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Publications Impact Indexes: Frecuently Asked Questions
Publications Impact Indexes: Frecuently Asked Questions
LIBRARY
EU (https://www.mondragon.edu/en/web/biblioteka/publications-impact-indexes?
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Home (/) Biblioteca (/en/web/biblioteka) Learning and researching (https://www.mondragon.edu/en/web/biblioteka/learning-and-researching)
Open Science
(https://www.mondragon.edu/en/web/biblioteka/open-
science) MEASURING SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY
Recommendations for There are several different metrics which are used to measure and evaluate the quality of scientific publications.
publishing
Scientific production is measured and evaluated based on a series of criteria relating to the quantity of works published
(https://www.mondragon.edu/en/web/biblioteka/recommendations-
and the number of times that these works have been cited. Among these criteria it is helpful to highlight:
for-publishing)
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• the total number of citations received
Your CV, evaluation and
accreditation of your • the average number of citations per work published
research • the number of significant works published
• the number of citations received by the most frequently-cited works
(https://www.mondragon.edu/en/web/biblioteka/your-
cv-evaluation-accreditation-
research)
EVALUATE AND ACCREDIT YOUR
RESEARCH
WHAT ARE PUBLICATIONS WITH “IMPACT”?
(HTTPS://WWW.MONDRAGON.EDU/EN/WEB/BIBLIOTEKA/EVALUATE-
ACCREDIT-YOUR-RESEARCH)
MEASURING THE IMPACT OF YOUR Publications with “impact” are those which are indexed in information portals that measure the quality and visibility of
PUBLICATIONS published material.
(HTTPS://WWW.MONDRAGON.EDU/EN/WEB/BIBLIOTEKA/MEASURING-
THE-IMPACT-OF-YOUR-PUBLICATIONS)
THE LIBRARY MEASURES YOUR
IMPACT
METRICS USED FOR JOURNALS: IMPACT INDICES OR IMPACT
INDICATORS
(HTTPS://WWW.MONDRAGON.EDU/EN/WEB/BIBLIOTEKA/THE-
LIBRARY-MEASURES-YOUR-IMPACT)
PUBLICATIONS IMPACT INDEXES
Impact indicators measure the impact that a journal has had on scientific literature. This impact is measured by analysing
(HTTPS://WWW.MONDRAGON.EDU/EN/WEB/BIBLIOTEKA/PUBLICATIONS-
IMPACT-INDEXES) the citations received by the articles published within that journal. Impact indicators measure the importance of a
AUTHOR IMPACT publication within a specific subject area.
(HTTPS://WWW.MONDRAGON.EDU/EN/WEB/BIBLIOTEKA/AUTHOR-
IMPACT) They make it possible to create comparisons between, and rankings of, journals in addition to measuring the relevance of
THE LIBRARY AND YOUR CV each title in the subject area that it is associated with.
(HTTPS://WWW.MONDRAGON.EDU/EN/WEB/BIBLIOTEKA/THE-
LIBRARY-AND-YOUR-CV)
Recommended academic
reading list TOOLS FOR UNDERSTANDING IMPACT INDEXES
(https://www.mondragon.edu/en/web/biblioteka/recommended-
academic-reading-list) There are several tools which enable users to look up and automatically calculate the impact indicators of the most
important scientific journals:
How to write citations,
bibliographic references and • Journal Citation Reports (JCR): It includes publications reviewed by the most widely-cited experts in the world and
bibliography covers approximately 200 different disciplines. JCR can be accessed online via the Web Of Science platform (WOS)
(https://www.mondragon.edu/en/web/biblioteka/how-
and can be used to run online searches and look up the Impact Factor of a given journal or a group of journals and
to-write-a-bibliography) make comparisons between these. The impact factor is calculated annually by the Institute for Scientific Information
(ISI).
• This is an essential tool for investigating the level of influence and impact that a journal has had on the
international research community.
• It does not measure the quality of an article but rather that of the journal in which the article was published.
• Not every journal has a JCR impact factor and journals that do have one do not have this permanently.
• The impact factor of a journal is updated every year and may vary from one year to another.
• One single journal can be associated with several subject areas and it is likely that the journal will have a
different level of impact within each of these subject areas.
• The impact index of a journal title in any given year is a fixed index in JCR.
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• Each subject category of journals is divided into four quartiles: Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. Q1 is occupied by the top 25%
of journals in the list; Q2 is occupied by journals in the 25 to 50% group; Q3 is occupied by journals in the 50 to
75% group and Q4 is occupied by journals in the 75 to 100% group. The most prestigious journals within a
subject area are those which occupy the first quartile, Q1.
• There are two different versions: one for Science and the other for Social Sciences.
• Coverage is provided from 1997 onwards. JCR is a paid-for tool which is funded by the FECYT (Spanish
Foundation for Science and Technology) https://www.recursoscientificos.fecyt.es/
(https://www.recursoscientificos.fecyt.es/)
• SCIMAGO Journal and Country Rank (SJR): This ranking emerged as a free-of-charge alternative to JCR. It
analyses publications indexed in the Scopus database which is provided by the publisher Elsevier, dating from 1997
to the present. SJR enables users to run online searches using the Scopus platform, which is a paid-for tool, or using
the SCIMAGO Journal and Country Rank (https://www.scimagojr.com/)-SJR.
• SJR does not measure the quality of an article but rather the quality of the journal in which the article is
published.
• Not every journal has an SJR impact factor and journals that do have one do not have this permanently.
• The impact factor of a journal is updated every year and may vary from one year to another.
• The tool enables users to look up the impact factor of a given journal or group of journals and to make
comparisons between these.
• One single journal can be associated with several subject areas and it is very likely that the journal will have a
different level of impact within each of these subject areas.
• The impact index of a journal title in any given year is not a fixed index in SJR and may vary.
• SJR includes a greater number of journals than the JCR, making it less selective.
• SJR is commonly used in science and social sciences. There are no separate versions for each subject area.
• Each subject group of magazines is divided into four quartiles: Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. Q1 is occupied by the top 25%
of journals in the list; Q2 is occupied by journals in the 25 to 50% group; Q3 is occupied by journals in the 50 to
75% group and Q4 is occupied by journals in the 75 to 100% group. The most prestigious journals within a
subject area are those occupying the first quartile, Q1.
divided by
SJR details the number of links that a journal receives based on the weighted citation of its documents relative to the
number of documents published in that year by each publication. The weighting of the citations is based on those received
by the citing publication.
The citation period is three years - one year longer than JCR - and it can be calculated on a yearly basis from 1999,
although data from Scopus publications have been compiled since 1996. In addition to this, the calculation disregards
citations to documents published within the journal itself.
These quartiles rank the journals from highest to lowest based on their impact factor or impact index. There are four
quartiles: Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4.
Q1 is occupied by the top 25% of journals in the list; Q2 is occupied by journals in the 25 to 50% group; Q3 is occupied by
journals in the 50 to 75% group and Q4 is occupied by journals in the 75 to 100% group.
The most prestigious journals within a subject area are those occupying the first quartile, Q1. The importance of the other
journals declines as we move down through the quartiles.
• JCR is a paid-for tool which is accessed via the Web Of Science platform. The database of citations on which it is
supported – the Web Of Science Core Collection – is also a paid-for service.
• SJR is free of charge. However, the database of citations on which it is supported – Scopus – is a paid-for service.
Another important difference between JCR and SJR relates to the variability of indicators:
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• the impact factor values provided by JCR are fixed and non-variable
• the values provided by SJR and the other indicators on the platform are all variable
• in JCR the citation period covers two years and every citation has the same weighting and the same value
• in SJR the citation period covers three years and the citations are all weighted, meaning that the value of the citation
depends on the position occupied by the journal in which the citations are made
We will now outline a series of tools which offer other indices that can be used to measure the quality of publications. This
is a small selection of the tools that are currently available.
• InRecs: http://ec3.ugr.es/in-recs/ (http://ec3.ugr.es/in-recs/) provides impact indices of Spanish journals in the subject
areas of Law and Social Sciences. Created by the Universidad de Granada. The information in InRecs has not been
updated since 2014.
• RESH: http://epuc.cchs.csic.es/resh/ (http://epuc.cchs.csic.es/resh/)Revistas Españolas de Ciencias Sociales y
Humanidades [“Spanish Humanities and Social Sciences Journals”]: this is a system which integrates quality
indicators for Spanish scientific journals in the subject areas of Social Sciences and Humanities. It was developed
within the framework of the Valoración integrada de las revistas españolas de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas
mediante la aplicación de indicadores múltiples [“Integrated evaluation of Spanish Social Sciences and Humanities
journals using multiple indicators”] project and financed by the National Research, Development and Innovation Plan.
• Dice: http://epuc.cchs.csic.es/dice/ (http://epuc.cchs.csic.es/dice/)this is the product of a partnership agreement
between theSpanish National Research Council (http://www.csic.es/) (CSIC (http://www.csic.es/)) http://www.csic.es/
(http://www.csic.es/) and theNational Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain
(http://www.aneca.es/) (ANECA). (http://www.aneca.es/)http://www.aneca.es/ (http://www.aneca.es/)It aims to
promote awareness of, and research into, some of the editorial characteristics and indirect quality indicators of
Spanish journals in the subject areas of Humanities and Social Sciences. ANECA uses this database as a quality
benchmark for Spanish publications in their evaluations of teaching staff.
• Scielo: http://www.scielo.org/php/level.php?lang=en&component=42&item=24 (http://www.scielo.org/php/level.php?
lang=en&component=42&item=24) provides bibliometric indicators for Spanish journals in the area of Health
Sciences. Created by Iberian-American institutions.
• Latindex: http://www.latindex.org/latindex/inicio (http://www.latindex.org/latindex/inicio) a regional online information
system for scientific journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal. An initiative led by the
Universidad Autónoma de Méjico. This tool provides the editorial characteristics that the system establishes through
the application of editorial quality criteria.
• Google Scholar Metrics: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues
(https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues) this provides the metrics applied by Google Scholar and
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publishes a ranking of scientific journals.
The h-index is based on a simple calculation which is used in a similar fashion regardless of the concept to be measured:
this calculation involves ranking scientific articles from the highest to the lowest according to the number of citations that
each one has received. The h-index is the point at which the article’s number in the ranking matches the number of
citations that it has received.
The main indicator adopted by Google is the h5-Index, which will be explained in greater detail below. Google Scholar
Metrics understands the H-Index of a publication as being the highest h-number that arises when the articles cited in that
publication are placed in descending order of more to less citations received and the highest number of citations received
is still equal to or lower than the total number of articles on the list.For example, if a publication has 5 articles and these
articles, when ordered by number of citations, have received 17, 9, 6, 3 and 2 citations respectively, we can conclude that
the h-index of the publication is 3.
Using data based on the h-index, Google Scholar provides the h5- or ih5-index of publicationsby calculating the citations
received in the previous five complete calendar years prior to the year in which the calculation was made (the publication
date of the article is not considered in this calculation). The metrics are based on citations received by all of the articles
indexed on Google Scholar up to a certain date.
Google Scholar also provides a ranking of journals based on the language in which they are published: it lists the 100 most
important publications or the 100 journals with the most significant impact in each language. These publications are
ordered by their h5 and h5-median indices. It is not currently possible to group and organise journals by their country of
publication.
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