Abstract
Innovations in scholarly publishing have led to new possibilities for academic journals (e.g., open access), and provided scholars with a range of indicators that can be used to evaluate their characteristics and their impact. This study identifies and evaluates the journal characteristics reported in five databases: Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory (Ulrichs), Journal Citation Reports (JCR), SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR), Google Scholar Metrics (GS), and Cabell’s Periodical Directory (Cabells). It describes the 13 indicators (variables) that are available through these databases—scholarly impact, subject category, age, total articles, distribution medium, open access, peer review, acceptance rate, pricing, language, country, status, and issue frequency—and highlights the similarities and differences in the ways these indicators are defined and reported. The study also addresses the ways in which this kind of information can be used to better understand particular journals as well as the scholarly publishing system.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adler, N. J., & Harzing, A.-W. (2009). When knowledge wins: Transcending the sense and nonsense of academic rankings. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 8(1), 72–95.
Alonso, S., Cabrerizo, F. J., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Herrera, F. (2009). h-Index: A review focused in its variants, computation and standardization for different scientific fields. Journal of Informetrics, 3(4), 273–289. doi:10.1016/j.joi.2009.04.001.
Anderson, P. (1997). ‘Gatekeepers’ and the quality of the journal literature: Findings from a survey of journal editors into the issue of alleged excessive publication in scholarly and scientific journals. Serials Review, 23(2), 45–57.
Antelman, K. (2004). Do open-access articles have a greater research impact? College & research libraries, 65(5), 372–382.
Axelrod, R. M. (1997). The complexity of cooperation: Agent-based models of competition and collaboration. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bar-Ilan, J. (2008). Which h-index?—A comparison of WoS. Scopus and Google Scholar. Scientometrics, 74(2), 257–271.
Björk, B.-C., & Hedlund, T. (2004). A formalised model of the scientific publication process. Online Information Review, 28(1), 8–21.
Björk, B.-C., & Solomon, D. (2012). Open access versus subscription journals: a comparison of scientific impact. BMC Medicine, 10(1), 73.
Blake, G., & Bly, R. W. (1993). The elements of technical writing. Harlow: Longman.
Bonabeau, E. (2002). Agent-based modeling: Methods and techniques for simulating human systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 99(Suppl 3), 7280–7287.
Colledge, L., de Moya-Anegón, F., Guerrero-Bote, V., López-Illescas, C., El Aisati, M., & Moed, H. F. (2010). SJR and SNIP: Two new journal metrics in Elsevier’s Scopus. Serials, 23(3), 215–221.
Delgado-López-Cózar, E., & Cabezas-Clavijo, Á. (2012). Google Scholar Metrics: An unreliable tool for assessing scientific journals. El profesional de la información, 21(4), 419–427.
Elsevier. (2016). Scopus. from Elsevier http://www.scopus.com/.
Garfield, E. (2006). The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, 295(1), 90–93.
Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Larivière, V., Gingras, Y., Carr, L., Brody, T., et al. (2010). Self-selected or mandated, open access increases citation impact for higher quality research. PLoS ONE, 5(10), e13636.
Google. (2016a). Google finance currency converter. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/finance/converter.
Google. (2016b). Google Scholar Metrics. Retrieved January 2016 https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/metrics.html.
Gu, X., & Blackmore, K. L. (2016). Recent trends in academic journal growth. Scientometrics, 1–24.
Gu, X., Blackmore, K., Cornforth, D., & Nesbitt, K. (2015). Modelling Academics as Agents An Implementation of an Agent-Based Strategic Publication Model. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 18(2), 10.
Guerrero, R., & Piqueras, M. (2010). Open access. A turning point in scientific publication. International Microbiology, 7(3), 157–161.
Guz, A., & Rushchitsky, J. (2009). Scopus: A system for the evaluation of scientific journals. International Applied Mechanics, 45(4), 351–362.
Hargens, L. L. (1988). Scholarly consensus and journal rejection rates. American Sociological Review, 139–151.
Harnad, S., & Brody, T. (2004). Comparing the impact of open access (OA) vs. non-OA articles in the same journals. D-lib Magazine, 10(6).
Hazelkorn, E. (2013). How rankings are reshaping higher education? Paper presented at the IAU 13th General Conference. The Netherlands: Utrecht.
Hicks, D. (1999). The difficulty of achieving full coverage of international social science literature and the bibliometric consequences. Scientometrics, 44(2), 193–215.
Jacsó, P. (2001). A deficiency in the algorithm for calculating the impact factor of scholarly journals: the journal impact factor. Cortex, 37(4), 590–594.
Jinha, A. E. (2010). Article 50 million: An estimate of the number of scholarly articles in existence. Learned Publishing, 23(3), 258–263.
Kalaitzidakis, P., Mamuneas, T. P., & Stengos, T. (2003). Rankings of academic journals and institutions in economics. Journal of the European Economic Association, 1(6), 1346–1366.
Kapelianis, D., & Cabell, D. W. (1999). Cabell’s directory of publishing opportunities in management and marketing. 440–442.
Larsen, P. O., & von Ins, M. (2010). The rate of growth in scientific publication and the decline in coverage provided by Science Citation Index. Scientometrics, 84(3), 575–603.
Lee, S., & Bozeman, B. (2005). The impact of research collaboration on scientific productivity. Social Studies of Science, 35(5), 673–702.
Leydesdorff, L. (2006). Can scientific journals be classified in terms of aggregated journal-journal citation relations using the journal citation reports? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(5), 601–613.
Mabe, M., & Amin, M. (2001). Growth dynamics of scholarly and scientific journals. Scientometrics, 51(1), 147–162.
Macal, C. M., & North, M. J. (2009). Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation. Paper presented at the 2009 Winter Simulation Conference, Austin, TX, USA.
MacRoberts, M. H., & MacRoberts, B. R. (1989). Problems of citation analysis: A critical review. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 40(5), 342.
Meho, L. I., & Yang, K. (2007). Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of science versus scopus and Google Scholar. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(13), 2105–2125.
Mölders, M., Fink, R. D., & Weyer, J. (2011). Modeling scientists as agents. How scientists cope with the challenges of the new public management of science. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 14(4), 6.
Nisonger, T. E. (1998). Management of Serials in Libraries. Maryland: ERIC.
Relman, A. S. (1990). Peer review in scientific journals–what good is it? Western Journal of Medicine, 153(5), 520.
Rice, B. A., & Stankus, T. (1983). Publication quality indicators for tenure or promotion decisions: What can the librarian ethically report? College and Research Libraries, 44(2), 173–178.
Schubert, A., & Glänzel, W. (2007). A systematic analysis of Hirsch-type indices for journals. Journal of Informetrics, 1(3), 179–184.
Solari, A., & Magri, M.-H. (2000). A new approach to the SCI Journal Citation Reports, a system for evaluating scientific journals. Scientometrics, 47(3), 605–625.
Solomon, D. J. (2007). The role of peer review for scholarly journals in the information age. Journal of Electronic Publishing, 10(1).
Starbuck, W. H. (2005). How much better are the most-prestigious journals? The statistics of academic publication. Organization Science, 16(2), 180–200.
Statzner, B., & Resh, V. H. (2010). Negative changes in the scientific publication process in ecology: Potential causes and consequences. Freshwater Biology, 55(12), 2639–2653.
Svensson, G., Rosenstreich, D., & Wooliscroft, B. (2006). How international are the top academic journals? The case of marketing. European Business Review, 18(6), 422–436.
Tenopir, C., & King, D. W. (2009a). The growth of journals publishing. The future of the academic journal, 1(84334), 416.
Tenopir, C., & King, D. W. (2009b). The growth of journals publishing. Oxford: Chandos Oxford.
Thomson Reuters. (2014). Cabell’s international. Retrieved from http://cabells.com/index.aspx.
Thomson Reuters. (2016). Journal citation Reports®. Retrieved from http://thomsonreuters.com/journal-citation-reports/.
Tuttle, M. (1987). The serials directory: An international reference book. Serials Review, 13(2), 5–14.
XE currency exchange website. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.xe.com.
Zitt, M., & Bassecoulard, E. (1998). Internationalization of scientific journals: A measurement based on publication and citation scope. Scientometrics, 41(1), 255–271.
Zuckerman, H., & Merton, R. K. (1971). Patterns of evaluation in science: Institutionalisation, structure and functions of the referee system. Minerva, 9(1), 66–100.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gu, X., Blackmore, K. Characterisation of academic journals in the digital age. Scientometrics 110, 1333–1350 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2219-4
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2219-4