Journal Citation Reports

Why use Journal Citation Reports?

Journal Citation Reports provides a systematic, objective way to evaluate the world’s leading research journals. It allows you to evaluate and compare journals by accumulating and tabulating citation and article counts from virtually all specialties in the sciences, social sciences, and technology fields. To help you compare journals and discover which are the most significant to you, Journal Citation Reports can show:

• Most frequently cited journals in a field
• Hottest journals in a field
• Highest impact journals in a field
• Most published articles in a field
• Subject category data for benchmarking

JCR citation data comes from over 7,600 journals, representing more than 3,300 publishers worldwide in over 220 disciplines. Each annual edition contains the previous year’s publication data and shows the relationship between citing and cited journals in a clear, easy-to-use framework.

JCR comes with two editions:

• JCR Science Edition: Contains data from over 5,900 journals in 171 subject categories.
• JCR Social Sciences Edition: Over 1,700 journals in the 55 subject categories.

How to search for a Specific Journal

From the JCR homepage, select the Search for a specific journal option. Click Submit to display the Journal Search page. Select one of the following search options: Full Journal Title, Journal Abbreviation, Title Word, or ISSN. Enter your search query. Capitalization does not matter. Use the asterisk (*) wildcard in the search query to find all journals that match the search query.

Full Journal Title

Find journals with full titles that match the search query.

• Journal of Cell Biology finds only that journal.
• Journal of Cell* finds Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, Journal of Cellular Plastics, etc.
• Journal* finds all journals beginning with the word Journal.

Journal Abbreviation

Find journals whose abbreviated version of the journal title match the search query.

• J Cell Biol finds Journal of Cell Biology.
• J Cell* finds Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, Journal of Cellular Plastics, etc.
• J Cell Bio* finds Journal of Cell Biology and Journal of Cellular Biochemistry.

Title Word

Find journals with titles that contain the word in the search query.

• Cell finds Cell, Journal of Cell Biology, Plant Cell, etc.
• Cell* finds Cell, Journal of Cell Biology, Plant Cell, etc.
• Cell Bio* finds Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics, Journal of Cell Biology, Cell Biology and Toxicology, etc.

ISSN Number

Find journals whose ISSN matches exactly the number in the search query. Do not use wildcards in this type of search.

• 0248-4900 finds the journal whose ISSN is 0248-4900.
• 02484900 finds the journal whose ISSN is 0248-4900.

What is an Impact Factor?

The Impact Factor identifies the frequency with which an average article from a journal is cited in a particular year. You can use this number to evaluate or compare a journal’s relative importance to others in the same field or see how frequently articles are cited to determine which journals may be better for your collection.

Impact Factor Trend Graph

This graph shows the Impact Factor of a journal over the last five years. It measures the frequency with which the average article in a journal is cited in a particular year, and compares the impact of a journal over the last five years.

Conditions that May Affect Journal Rankings and Impact Factors

• If a journal publishes a large number of reviews one year, there may be a temporary increase in the number of citations received.
• Sudden changes in a journal’s size can affect the Impact Factor. For example, when an article count drops, the Impact Factor may rise temporarily.
• In the first year after a journal title change, the new title is listed without an Impact Factor because the article count for the two preceding years used in the Impact Factor calculations is zero.

Marked journal list

The Marked Journal List page displays all the journals you have marked during a session (up to 500). You can mark journals on the Journal List Summary page by selecting the Mark check box next to the records you want, and then clicking Update Marked List. You can also click Mark All to add all records to your marked list. On the Full Record page, select the Mark check box to add the record to your marked list. Click the Marked List button on the toolbar to go to the Marked Journal List page.
The Marked Journal List page keeps all your marked journals while you are searching through a particular JCR edition and year. If you change the JCR edition or year, you are asked if you want to clear the Marked List.

Use the available options on this page to:

Print Records

• Click the Format for Print button to display journal information for the marked journals.
• Click your browser's Print function to print the file.
• Click the Return to Marked List button to return to the Marked Journal List page.

Save Records

• Click the Save to File button to display a File Download dialog box.
• Click the Save button to display the Save As dialog box.
• Type a file name in the File name text box. Ensure that you give the file name a .txt extension.
• Select a folder to store the saved text file.
• Click the Save button.

Remove Records

Clear the Mark check box next to the journal(s) you wish to remove. Click the Update Marked List button to redisplay the list with the selected journals removed. You can also click the Clear Marked List button to remove all the journals from the marked list.

If you would like any further help, contact your librarian