Research support: Choosing a journal to publish in (Journal citation reports)

• Ask your peers for recommendations
• See what journals are publishing in your area via  a search of databases
• Check the accredited journal lists
• Check Journal Citation Reports

WHAT ARE JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS?

JCR "is a report on the citation impact of a defined set of journals [published in Web of Science] at a given moment in time"

JCR "offers a systematic, objective means to critically evaluate the world's leading journals, with quantifiable, statistical information based on citation data." JCR looks at the impact of  journals (JIF Journal Impact factor): "We capture the cited references for all content from these journals, and we link those cited references to the cited papers. This article-level citation data is aggregated to the journal-level at the end of the year to create the indicators available in JCR"  (https://jcr.help.clarivate.com/Content/home.htm).

WHAT IS A GOOD JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR (JIF)?

In most fields a JIF of 3 is considered good and over 10 excellent. The higher the impact factor the more highly ranked the journal is.

JIFs do however vary from discipline to discipline as the nature of publishing is different. One cannot really compare impact factors across different disciplines.