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Research Impact Tools and Metrics

Find credible journals in your field

The following library databases and other online resources are good sources for finding journals by topic or keywords. When searching Web of Science, Scopus, and other library databases, look for filters that display the journal (or source or publication) titles of the articles in your search results.

Determine journal impact

The following library databases and other online resources publish annual reports of impact factor metrics, citation counts, and other measurements of a journal's impact within a discipline. Journal Citation Reports (JCR) publishes the well-known metric, Journal Impact Factor (JIF). This is a number calculated based on citations to items in a given year, divided by the number of citable items from the two previous years. 

(You can also access Journal Citation Reports via Web of Science.)

Scopus's CiteScore and Scimago's SJR use similar calculations but different date ranges.

Google Scholar Metrics publishes a number called the h5-index, which is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each over a five-year period.