Scholarly Communication

Scholarly publishing is the result of research from which scholarly writings are created. Scholarly publishing exists to:

1. Describe the research
2. Evaluate its reliability and reproducibility
3. Disseminate it through multiple channels
4. Preserve what has been done for future use. Further inquiry and subsequent knowledge is created from this system, which in turn results in additional communication among scholars.

Below are tools that not only measure journal impact but can also help inform on what journal to publish in based on discipline and the quality of the journal.

The journal impact factor (JIF) plays a role in decided where to publish peer-review articles; however, the selection of where to publish a monograph or book chapter is different. Below are some helpful resources in lieu of the JIF. 

Web of Science (WoS) is a citation index to thousands of scholarly journals worldwide including open access journals, conference proceedings, and other materials.  It can help faculty advance their research interests and academic publishing with access to journal analytics tools and current archives to the following core collections:

• Science Citation Index Explanded, 1969-present
• Social Sciences Citation Index, 1981-present
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index, 2001-present

What's new?  Access to preprint citations and records of dissertations & theses

Further Help:  About Web of Science | Reference Guide PDF | Video Tutorials

By creating a free profile on Web of Science through the library, you will have full entitlements to view all publications and metrics and to use the platform for tracking and promoting your scholarly contributions, such as journal and review articles. Here's how to register:

• Go to usafa.libguides.com/wos
• Register for account top right hand corner
• Enter your email, name and password for a profile
• Check your email for a Clarivate registration confirmation
• Click email link to activate your Web of Science account
• Sign In to your new Web of Science account after activation
• Notice your unique Web of Science ResearcherID

• Sign in and manage your profile
• Open Menu from side navigation to edit profile settings
• Enter your preferred name and primary organization
  • i.e. United States Air Force Academy
• Update publication and peer review for any preferences
• Edit ORCID Syncing in your profile to link identifiers 
• Edit "My Records" to add your publications, peer reviews
  • Option to add pubs by identifier, e.g. DOI, Title

Help Guides:  Metrics | Researcher Profiles | Quick Reference PDF

1. Author Search (Documents):
   • Select the Author field to search in Documents
   • Search variations if published under multiple names
   • Start with surname:  e.g. Greaves J or Greaves Jane
   • Refine results or filter by Author, if needed
2. Cited Reference Search (Documents):
   • Use Cited Authors to find records citing your work
   • Search using the same format as Author Search
   • Check results of each citation for no. of Citing Articles 
   • Click the number to see all records that cite your work
3. Researcher Search (Researchers):
   • Perform a Name Search to find your author profile
   • View your Summary Profile Metrics
   • Find data on your publications and articles cited
   • Check records for keywords, funding sources & more
   • View the Citation Report
     • Lists your publications 
     • Used for tenure & promotion
     • Consulted by funders & grant agencies
   • Click Analyze Results for graphical category display
   • h-index information can be found in the Citation Report
     •  Brief Article discusses pros and cons of using the h-index
   • Two other options to start your author search
     • Author Identifiers (ResearcherID or ORCID)
     • Organization (Authors listed with a University or Research Institution)

Click "Analyze Results" when doing a search by topic to identify journals that publish the highest number of papers on topics of interest.

• Analyze Results of a Search
  • Use for category visualizations & other insights  e.g. Artificial Intelligence (image above)
  • See Refine Results for citation topics, affliations, and more
• View Author Impact Beamplots - to visualize a researcher's publication and citation impact
• Create Author Alert - every time an author has a new publication
• Set Up Citation Alert - to get an notified every time your article or publication is cited
• Create Citation Report - on topics with less than 10,000 results

JCR is a research analytics tool on the InCites platform and integrated with the Web of Science. It measures the citation performance of journals to help you make informed publication decisions in your field of study:

• Finding topics the journal publishes suited to your interests
• Choosing a good journal to publish your manuscript
• Comparing highly cited journals in your field of study

Further Help:  About Journal Citation Reports | User Guide PDF

JCR produces journal rankings based on quantitative analysis with metrics. Journal-level metrics help to provide a more detailed view of a journal's impact within its field.

Journal Impact Factor (JIF):

• Measures the mean citation rate of an article
• Assesses citations of every published item type
• Counts all item types published from the prior 2 years
• JIF is calculated using the following metrics
  • Citations to items published from prior 2 years
  • Number of citable items from prior 2 years
• JIF Number = Citations to Items / Citable Items
• Quick Overview PDF

Journal Citation Indicator (JCI):

• Measures the citation of a journal
• Evaluates citation counts for articles & reviews only
• Published articles & reviews from the prior 3 years
• Uses Category-Normalization Citation Impact (CNCI)
  • Citation counts to its peer groups compared
  • Document type, year & category compared
• CNCI = Actual Citations / Expected Citations
• Quick Overview PDF

A feature in JCR to help identify quality journals indexed in Web of Science that publish articles on topics related to your manuscript.

• Use the "Match My Manuscript" link from JCR main page
• Enter your publication title with an abstract
  • Min. 10 words (title) & Min. 100 words (abstract)
  • Cited references optional to find journals
• See match results of journals listed by top keywords
• View profile page of each journal for summary of metrics
  • Includes JIF, JCI and other factoring information

You can use JCR to find journals in a particular research area by category and publisher information from different countries and regions. Use top menu to search by Journals, Categories, Publishers and Countries/Regions, or the filter panel in JCR to limit your search.

• Find highly cited journals in your field by category
• Use filter to select categories, and apply results
• View and sort journal indicators for performance
• Download/export a listing (CVS or XLS formats)
• Includes Open Access (OA) journals and metrics

Learn more about Open Access:  OA in Journal Citation Reports | Quick Reference PDF

Uncover top performing and highly cited papers, authors, institutions, countries & journals in varied disciplines based on citation levels:

• Identify emerging and trending topics in your research field
• Find out which authors and journals are the most highly cited
• Filter or narrow by author, journal, institution, research fronts
• View map to locate countries with highly cited research

Help Guides:  Overview | Quick Reference PDF

Scimago captures similar metrics and includes more journals that are indexed in JCR. If you are unable to find a particular journal in JCR, you’ll likely find it in Scimago. On the journal’s page in Scimago, you’ll notice that the H-Index is the main metric listed. You are free to grab that metric, or you can look at the H5-Index in Google Scholar. 

The metric most interested in from Scimago is the Scientific Journal Ranking (SJR). To find this, you’ll want to scroll way down the page, until you see the boxes with all of the graphs. The first one is SJR. You can toggle the box from the graph to a chart that will list the SJR numbers by year. The most current year will appear at the bottom. To find the quartiles in Scimago, you’ll then want to scroll back up a bit to find the Quartiles section. You can toggle this one as well to get the list of quartiles for each category. While some of the categories may be the same as the ones in JCR, they will likely be a bit different. These are based on JCR and Scimago’s categories, not those determined by the journal itself. 

Usually, an article record in Google Scholar or the Web of Science will provide a link to the article on the publisher’s site, but you can also do a web search or use the DOI to find it. 

There are two pieces of information on the publisher’s website to find: the Altmetric score, and usage data, like views and downloads. Sometimes the publisher will include the Altmetric score with other article metrics, but so long as there is a DOI on the page, you should be able to look it up using the bookmarklet tool. In this case, both usage data and the Altmetric score are listed: 

However, since this publisher provides a separate tab of metrics data, it is always a good idea to check to see what information is collected there. In some cases, it may be more granular than what appears on the article’s landing page. 

Altmetric bookmarklet tool, which is an internet browser add-on that uses an article’s DOI to find the associated Altmetric record. Once the tool has been installed, clicking the button will generate a small window with the Altmetric score in the upper-right of your browser. 

Clicking on the window will bring you to the full details about the different facets that contribute to the full Altmetric score. 

The JournalGuide is a free database of journals that allows you to "Search, filter, sort, and compare journals from more than 46,000 titles".  Their goal is to "...is to bring all sources of data together in one place to give authors a simple way to choose the best journal for their research". You may search using your manuscript title, keywords from the title, journal name, publisher, or category/subcategory. Includes open access journals and impact factors when available.

"SAGE Path is a free article transfer service that helps authors find the right journal for their manuscript. We give authors the ability to search and refine journals according to their preferences using our Journal Recommender. Once the manuscript has been paired with appropriate journals, SAGE Path offers transfer links for smooth and easy submission."

IEEE Publication Recommender "Find the best match for your scholarly article" Also searches for conferences.

Directory of Open Access Journals "DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. All DOAJ services are free of charge including being indexed. All data is freely available." 

Open Access journals serve as an alternative to commercial publishers.  Most have no publication fees and are peer-reviewed before being accepted and  final publication. A In addition they allow authors to upload copies to their institutional repository.