Rankings and Impact factors

Perhaps most well-known is the journal impact factor (JIF). This can be found in the Journal Citation Report from Clarivate (which can be accessed via UiBs subscription). JIF is based on the average number of citations of each article in a journal (read Clarivate's description of JIF here).

The Journal Citation Report also includes other indicators. From 2021, the journal citation index (JCI) is included; similar to JIF, this looks at average citations of articles in the journal, but normalizes for subject category. A rating of 1 means it is average, whereas 1.5 means it has 50 % more citations than other journals in the category.

Note: not all journals are included in the Journal Citation Report, and not all have a JIF. Not having a JIF does not necessarily mean that a journal is poor quality. A journal can be indexed in Web of Science, but still not have a JIF - this includes those indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). Journals in the ESCI have been evaluated for quality, but to be placed in an index where JIF is calculated they must also meet Clarivate's "impact" criteria, which can be difficult for journals that are very specialised. Journals publishing in a local language may not even make it into the ESCI due to language criteria. You can read about Clarivate's inclusion criteria here.

There are alternatives to the JCR, but these are less widely used - e.g. the SCImago Journal & Country Rank based on data from Scopus, or the journal h5-index from Google Scholar Metrics.

National systems

In the national system for publishing channels in Norway, academic journals, series and publishers are assigned levels (nivå 0, 1, 2 and X), and these are used in some parts of national performance-based funding. You can search the list, and find out more about the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers here. Tip: This list can help if you are unsure if a journal/publisher is legitimate/predatory.

Issues

JIF was designed to help with journal subscription management, and can say something about the prestige of a journal. However, journal-level metrics have also been used in evaluations of individual researchers/articles, as an indicator for article "quality". There are a number of issues with doing this, and newer approaches to researcher assessment advise against using journal metrics for assessment of individual researchers or articles (for example, Horizon Europe explicitly instructs evaluators not to consider JIF). Read more in the DORA declaration (signed by the ERC and Research Council of Norway, amongst others). Issues include:

Read more about appropriate and inappropriate uses of JIF in the metrics toolkit, or "What's wrong with the journal impact factor in five graphs" in Nature news.

Trying to pick a journal to publish in? Factors to consider when picking a journal. Check if your chosen journal is registered on level 1 or 2 in the Norwegian register of Scientific Journals here.