Ranking journals: could Google Scholar Metrics be an alternative to Journal Citation Reports and Scimago Journal Rank?
Open accessAbstract
The launch of Google Scholar Metrics as a tool for assessing scientific journals may be serious competition for Thomson Reuters' Journal Citation Reports, and for the Scopus‐powered Scimago Journal Rank. A review of these bibliometric journal evaluation products is performed. We compare their main characteristics from different approaches: coverage, indexing policies, search and visualization, bibliometric indicators, results analysis options, economic cost, and differences in their ranking of journals. Despite its shortcomings, Google Scholar Metrics is a helpful tool for authors and editors in identifying core journals. As an increasingly useful tool for ranking scientific journals, it may also challenge established journals products.
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The H index helps best represent the top journals across scientific disciplines with the most sustained influence and leadership in the specialty.
“Thus we utilized the H index to help best represent the top journals across scientific disciplines with the most sustained influence and leadership in the specialty.”
From Publishers’ and journals’ instructions to authors on use of generative artificial intelligence in academic and scientific publishing: Bibliometric analysis (2024) · cites this paper as [29]
The Overview section describes the h-index as stable over time, and Journal rankings: results' comparison calls Google Scholar Metrics a generally reliable alternative for measuring journal impact. The paper does not establish that the h-index best identifies journals with sustained influence or leadership across disciplines; it cautions that the measure favors journals with more papers and can produce counterintuitive rankings. Page numbers are not available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe H index is considered to be more stable over time than the journal impact factor.
“Unlike the journal impact factor, which fluctuates often and was noticeably affected by the covid-19 pandemic, 28 the H index is considered to be more stable over time.29”
From Publishers’ and journals’ instructions to authors on use of generative artificial intelligence in academic and scientific publishing: Bibliometric analysis (2024) · cites this paper as [29]
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“29 Thus we utilized the H index to help best represent the top journals across scientific disciplines with the most sustained influence and leadership in the specialty.”
MethodDelgado López‐Cózar, E., Robinson‐García, N., & Torres‐Salinas, D. (2014) · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.23056 · Cited by 272 · see citing works
Self-citationOn the Stability of Citation-Based Journal Rankings
Pajić, D. (2015) · Journal of Informetrics · doi:10.1016/j.joi.2015.08.005 · Cited by 62 · see citing works
Campanario, J. M. (2018) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-018-2660-7 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
- Authors
- DELGADO‐LÓPEZ‐CÓZAR, E., & CABEZAS‐CLAVIJO, Á.
- Affiliations
- Universidad de Granada Spain
- Venue
- Learned Publishing
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2013-04
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 101-114
- ISSN
- 0953-1513 (ISSN-L)
- 1741-4857
- OpenAlex
- W2086951786
- Cited by
- 107
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 9
- FWCI
- 11.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- Learned Publishing (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Web visibility and informetrics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Keywords
- Google Scholar Metrics, Journal Citation Reports, SCImago Journal Rank, journal rankings, journal evaluation, bibliometric indicators, core journals, Thomson Reuters, Scopus
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