LibGuides: Understanding Journals: Peer-Reviewed, Scholarly, & Popular: Journal Rankings

Journal Ranking Resources

The following resources are tools to tell how much of an impact journals have or how important they are to their field.

SCImago Journal & Country Rank This link opens in a new window
Portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus database. Shows h-index for journals.
CiteScore This link opens in a new window
Database of scholarly citation metrics for documents in academic and trade journals, book series, and conference proceedings. Covers the previous three calendar years, with current-year data added monthly.

CiteScore metrics factsheet.
Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
1997-present. Information to assist in determining the importance of particular journals within subject categories. Covers thousands of scholarly and technical journals worldwide. Includes Science and Social Sciences Editions. Mobile app available.
Cabell's Scholarly Analytics This link opens in a new window
Directory providing publishing information on academic journals in multiple fields in the social sciences and humanities. Cabell's includes journals in the list based on multiple factors including peer review, licensing policies, integrity, fees, ethical guidelines, sponsorship, and more.

These directories assist researchers in the organizing and preparing of manuscripts by providing the publishing information of thousands of academic journals, including subject areas emphasized by each journal, type of review process, acceptance rate, number of reviewers, time required for review, and availability of reviewer comments. Some specific manuscript submission guidelines are also provided.
Altmetric Explorer This link opens in a new window
Tracks "mentions" on the web in various sources (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.). Browse, search, and query mentions of publications and other output by researchers at U-M and elsewhere.
Altmetric Explorer for Institutions is a dashboard that allows users to browse, search, and query Altmetric data about "mentions" on the web of publications and other research outputs associated with researchers and departments at the University of Michigan--and elsewhere. The tool can be used to find and connect with readers of your work; to understand and communicate about online engagement with the work of any given researcher or department, or to see which research is most often mentioned in the news, cited in policy, etc. The University of Michigan is conducting a one-year pilot that will allow all affiliated users at the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses to access the Altmetric Explorer.

Altmetric has a large and ever-growing set of sources where they look for mentions, since October 2011. (Start date of tracking varies by source.) It includes:
- More than 2,000 different news and media outlets (e.g., The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Vox, Salon, Huffington Post, etc.)
- Publicly visible posts on social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, etc.)
- Academic social platforms (Mendeley, F1000)
- Selected scholarly/academic blogs (e.g., Scholarly Kitchen)
- Collections of book reviews (e.g., Bryn Mawr Classical Review)
- Wikipedia
- Policy documents (e.g., Gov.UK, IMF, WHO, etc.)
- Syllabi in the Open Syllabus Project