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Research Impact Metrics

Part of the guide was adapted with permission from University of Oklahoma's Brent Tweedy.

Introduction

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

  • Impact Factor—a measure of the average number of citations received by recent articles in a journal
  • Additional JCR Metrics—Journal Citation Reports (JCR) publishes several metrics based on Web of Science citation data
  • h-index—a measure of the influence of either a journal or an individual scholar that accounts for both productivity and impact

Citation Data Sources

Web of Science

IFPRI library's main sources for citation metrics are Web of Science and Journal Citation Reportspublished by Clarivate Analytics.

Google Scholar

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.

Journal Citation Reports

What is Journal Citation Reports (JCR)?

Journal Citation Reports™ (JCR) provides you with the transparent, publisher-neutral data and statistics you need to make confident decisions in today’s evolving scholarly publishing landscape, whether you’re submitting your first manuscript or managing a portfolio of thousands of publications.

Quickly understand a journal’s role within and influence upon the global research community by exploring a rich array of citation metrics, including the Journal Impact Factor™ (JIF), alongside descriptive data about a journal’s open access content and contributing authors. [Source]

How to access JCR?

To access JCR, go to ISI Web of Science page and select Journal Citation Reports on the top menu.

IFPRI is a CGIAR Research Center