Finding Influential Journals: Scopus and Scimago

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1 Finding Influential Journals: Scopus and Scimago The Compare Journals feature in Scopus allows you to search for and compare citation data on different journals. It does not provide subject category journal ranking lists, so is only useful to look up and compare individual journal titles. However, The SCImago free web-based service (which is covered later in this workbook) uses the same Scopus data to rank journals by subject area. Access Scopus via StarPlus Access the Scopus database via StarPlus Sign into MUSE Access StarPlus via the My services link Search in the University Collections tab for Web of Science. Click View it and follow the View full text link. On the University Library Scopus page click Connect to Scopus

2 Once in Scopus, click on the Compare journals link Search for an individual journal title Type the title of the journal you are interested in (eg: American Economic Review). By default the search will be performed in all subject areas, but you can limit to your area of interest using the Limit to menu. Click on Search Your title will appear in the left hand menu (there may be more than one journal matching your search,so select the right one) Tick the box next to the journal title to see a graph of various metrics over time:

3 There are several different metrics available in Scopus SNIP Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) is one of the main journal metrics provided in Scopus. SNIP is adjusted to account for differences in citation behaviour between different academic disciplines, so it is one of the few metrics that enables you to compare journal rankings across different academic fields. Click on the SNIP tab : You can display the results as a table rather than a graph by using the options just above the tabs. Click on Table and you see the same data in a tabular format (please note that this data will change over time so may not match this screenshot) Other Scopus Metrics: SJR and IPP As well as SNIP, the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) is also provided for each journal title. SJR differs from SNIP in that it assigns higher value/weight to citations from more prestigious journals. Subject field, quality and reputation of the citing journal have a direct effect on the value given to a citation. Like SNIP, SJR also normalizes for differences in citation behaviour between subject fields. Impact per Publication (IPP) measures the ratio of citations per article published, and is similar to the Impact Factor from Web of Science. It gives an indication of the average number of citations an article published in the journal is likely to receive, and is therefore a useful way to identify good journals to publish in to boost your impact. It is not normalised by academic discipline however, so if you want to compare journals from different academic fields, use SNIP instead. In the table display, you can also explore: total articles published in the year (docs), total citations for the title, percentage of articles not cited at all. Note that Scopus provides a relatively small number of metrics and figures compared to Journal Citation Reports To explore these other metrics in a graphic display return to the Chart option.

4 Comparing Different Journals Scopus does not provide a ready-to-use ranking of the top journals in a particular subject field, unlike Journal Citation Reports. However it has a good tool for selecting specific journals and seeing how their performances compare. Search for another journal title to compare with the one you already have selected, and tick the box next to the one you want: You can now compare on the graphs the metrics for these two journal titles, there are now 2 lines (one for each title). You can compare up to 10 journals at once.

5 SCImago Journal and Country Rank (SJR) SCImago Journal and Country Rank (SJR) is a free service that uses the same data as the Compare Journals tool in Scopus. Whilst Scopus only allows you to compare individual journal titles, SJR allows you to look at all the journals from a particular subject area (in the same way as Web of Science Journal Citation Reports). To access SJR, go to (or search for Scimago on Google) Select Journal Rankings You can now select the subject area, region/country, publication type (journal/conference proceedings etc) and year that you are interested in: When you are happy with your selections, click the Refresh button You now see the top ranked journals matching your criteria: By default the list will be ranked by the SJR metric. You can re-sort this listing according to a number of different metrics by clicking on the column headings. You will probably find that the order changes quite considerably depending on which metric you select.