Search for (high ranking) journals in Browzine, Web of Science, Google Scholar or RUQuest. Metrics are used to evaluate the importance of an academic journal, publication or author. There are several methods to measure it e.g. Journal Impact Factor, Eigenfactor, or the h(5) - index.
The content of our libguides are focused on students. Contact us at infofm@ubn.ru.nl if you are a researcher and want to know more about metrics.
The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is calculated by having the citations, in the selected year, of published articles (in the journal) from the most recent two years, divided by the total number of articles (in the journal) from these recent two years.
It reflects the yearly average number of citations of recent articles (last two years) published in a specific journal, and is used as a measure for the scientific impact of a journal. Access to the data via the Incites Journal Citation Reports.
Example of the calculation of the JIF, for the highest Impact Factor of 2019 of the journals in Economics (QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS)
More on Journal Impact Factor (YouTube)
Citations, in the selected year, of published articles (in a journal) from the most recent five years, divided by the total number of articles from the most recent five full years. Citations from highly cited journals are given more weight than others, which especially makes it different from the JIF. Access to the data via the Incites Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate).
Impact measurement of the Nijmegen School of Management is focused on the Article Influence Score, which is derived of the Eigenfactor so that is give a score for the average article of a journal.
More on Eigenfactor (Eigenfactor.org)
h-index (Hirsch-index)
The h-index measures the impact of a researcher, h is the largest number of articles that have been cited h times (invented by Jorge E. Hirsch in 2005). See the image below for a visual explanation of the h-index. The h-index of authors can be looked up in several sources, such as in Web of Science through Author Search.
It may also be applied to a set of articles, for example that of a journal. The h5-index looks at publications in the last five complete calendar years. Access to h5-index via Google Scholar
Altmetric Attention score
Altmetrics complement traditional bibliometrics (based on scientific citations). Altmetrics enables us to measure the societal impact of a scientific publication by tracking how often publications are mentioned in e.g. social media, (scientific) blogs, news releases, and public policy documents.
This may be useful to measure if publications of a researcher or institute have impact outside academics.
Example of Altmetrics score, visualised by donuts. Each color illustrate different sources.
More on Altmetrics (Altmetric.com)
