Metrics:
Calculation: B / A = Impact factor
(A) No. of total citable items published in the journal for the last two years
(B) Total number of times the published items (A) were cited in the current year
E.g. if a journal has an impact factor of 3.0 this means it has published 1000 articles in the past two years that have been cited 3000 times in the current year. 3000 (2014) / 1000 (2012-2013) = 3.0
E.g. The CiteScore for 2023 for Journal A will be calculated by the number of citations to all items published in the period 2020-2022 and divided by the total number of publications for the same 3-year period.
CiteScore vs. Journal Impact Factor:
CiteScore | Journal Impact Factor |
uses Scopus data | uses Web of Science data |
uses a 4-year period | uses a 2-year period |
includes all document types indexed by Scopus |
only includes "citable documents" (articles and reviews) |
E.g. The Nature magazine has an H5-index of 467, meaning that 467 articles published between 2018-2022 have been cited at least 467 times each.
E.g. The median number of citations for the H5-index of the Nature magazine is 707 citations.
Keep in mind that a journal with good appearing metrics can still be predatory. Consult our LibGuide for more information and tips for identifying Predatory Journals.
Journal Impact factor can be found in Web of Science platform. You can access all journals indexed in the database from the Master Journal List (see below).
Journal Citation Reports is a tool by Web of Science designed to help you find and assess journals. You can access it from the WoS Product tab on the top right.
You can also explore journals through the Master journal list in Web of Science to search for journal titiles and view their metrics.
Google Scholar provides information about the H5-index and H5-median. It is accessible from the Metrics tab - Top publications. You can choose different subject area from the Categories tab and view the publications with highest rank.
SCimago Journal Rankings (SJR) information can be accessed from their website or from Scopus platform.
Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) information can be found on the Scopus platform or in CWTS Journal Indicators website.