LibGuides: Finding journal articles and journals: Journal quality and peer review (2024)

Search Summon

On the Library's Summon discovery service you can apply the 'Peer review' limit to your search results to restrict to the highest quality articles.

Search subject databases

Instead of using Google or Google Scholar to find articles, use the databases listed in your subject guide. Journals are carefully selected for inclusion in these databases and are usually peer reviewed (although they may also include non-peer reviewed titles such as trade journals if they are relevant). So you can be confident that articles you find on databases such as Web of Science and Scopus will be suitable for use in your academic assignments.

• Find key databases for your subject

  See Also

  Peer Review, The Limitations, and the Progress of Science | Center for InquiryLaw 101: Legal Guide for the Forensic Expert | Requirements for Evidence AdmissibilityPeer Review in Science: the pains and problems - Science in the NewsPeer-review and publication does not guarantee reliable information - Students 4 Best Evidence

Checking if a journal is peer reviewed

If you are unsure about the quality of an article you wish to use, take a look at the instructions for authors on the journal's website and it should indicate if a review takes place.

You might be asked to use articles in journals which are highly ranked in their fieldbut what does this mean and how do you identify suitable journals?

There are several measures that are used to rank journals in a subject area. All rely on the number of citations that papers in the journal receive from other researchers.

An important factor to remember is that the importance or significance of an individual article does not directly relate to the journal in which it was published - a poorarticle can be published in a 'top' journal and vice versa.

Some of the most common measures used to rank journals are

1. Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
2. CiteScore
3. SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
4. Source-normalised Impact per Paper (SNIP)

Journal Impact Factor

The JournalImpact Factorindicates the frequency with whichan average article from a journal is cited over a two year window. The higher the number the more impact the journal is deemed to have because its articles arebeing cited more frequently. Impact Factors arecalculated for journals included in Science and Social Science Citation Indexes inthe Web of Science database. Some journals choose not to be tracked for an impact factor due to concerns about the responsible use of journal metrics.

Many journals will display their impact factor on their homepage, but how do you know how that the claim is legitimate or how it compares with others? Search the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database to find out. Note that the JCR only covers science and social science subjects.

1. Login to the JCR via the link below.
2. Select 'Browse by Category'
3. Find the most relevant subject category in the list (click on the 'Category' heading to sort the list alphabetically) and click on the number of journals to a view a list with the most highly ranked journal at the top.

• JCR (Journal Citation Reports) This link opens in a new window

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  Gives impact factors and other evaluative information for journals in the sciences and social sciences.

  • Science and technology (over 7,350 leading journals covered)
  • Social sciences (over 2,240 leading journals covered)

• Journal Citation Reports: learn the basics

  A LibGuide prepared by Clarivate Analytics, the company behind the JCR database

CiteScore

CiteScore is a similar metric to Journal Impact Factor but is calculated by the Scopus database rather than the Web of Science. It has a longer time window for calculating citations and so works well for subject areas where citations can be slow to accrue (for example arts and humanities).

1. Log in to Scopus via the link below.
2. Select 'Sources' from the top menu
3. Search by subject category to view a list of journals ranked by their CiteScore value. If you click on a journal title, you can also find the SJR and SNIP values for the journal.

• Scopus This link opens in a new window

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  Find CiteScore rankings for journals and check their SJR and SNIP scores

Scimago Journal Rank

The SJR is calculated using data from the Scopus database. It is similar to a page ranking system as citations are weighted according to the journal that they come from. If a journal receives lots of citations from high ranked journals, these will boost the ranking more than citations from lower ranking journals. The SJR values are available in Scopus and also from Scimago.

• Scimago Journal Rank (SJR)

  This metric ranks journals by attempting to account for the number of citations received by a journal and also the importance of the journals from where the citations originated. The metric was inspired by the PageRank algorithm. It is also incorporated into Scopus and SciVal.

Source Normalised Impact per Paper (SNIP)

The SNIPvalue is calculated by the Leiden University's Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS)and is based on Scopusdata. The SNIP value measures the average citation impact of the publications of a journal and corrects for the differences in citation patterns between fields (not taken into account by the Journal Impact Factor). This makes comparisons between fields easier to make. The SNIP values are available in the Scopus database.

• Source Normalised Impact per Paper (SNIP)

  The SNIP metric corrects for differences in citation practices between subject areas.