Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted intelligence, has released the 2023 update to its annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The JCR offers valuable insights into over 21,500 high-quality academic journals from more than 250 scientific and research disciplines, aiding researchers in identifying leading journals within their fields. This comprehensive resource, based on the rigorous quality standards of the Web of Science index, supports the research community's commitment to research integrity and accurate journal evaluation.
For nearly 50 years, the Journal Citation Reports has served as a trusted resource for the global academic community. It provides key citation impact trends, encompassing various metrics, descriptive data, and visualizations that enable meaningful comparisons and valuable insights.
Among the metrics included in the annual reports are the widely recognized Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and the Journal Citation Indicator. Clarivate emphasizes the importance of utilizing contextual information alongside the JIF to present a comprehensive view of a journal's influence. This holistic approach encourages journal editors and the scholarly community to consider additional indicators and descriptive data when evaluating journals.
In a significant development, all Web of Science Core Collection journals that meet the stringent quality criteria were eligible to receive a Journal Impact Factor for the first time. This expansion extended the JIF to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) and the multidisciplinary Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), resulting in more than 9,000 journals from over 3,000 publishers receiving a JIF. The inclusion of these journals, selected by the Web of Science editorial team through a thorough evaluation process that applies 24 rigorous quality criteria, enhances the ability of the scholarly community to identify trustworthy and high-quality publications.
The 2023 release of JCR introduces the JIF with one decimal place, allowing for more ties and encouraging users to consider additional indicators and descriptive data for comparison. The Journal Citation Indicator, a normalized journal-level metric, is emphasized to facilitate easy interpretation and cross-disciplinary comparison.
Key highlights from the 2022 data include the identification of more than 21,500 high-quality journals across various research categories and countries. This includes 13,668 science journals, 7,123 social science journals, and 3,248 arts and humanities journals. Furthermore, over 5,600 journals publish all their content as open access, and a remarkable 9,136 journals received a Journal Impact Factor for the first time.
The JCR relies on data compiled from the Web of Science Core Collection, the world's largest publisher-neutral global citation database, comprising journals, books, and conference proceedings. Clarivate's global team of in-house editors meticulously evaluates publications based on rigorous selection criteria to ensure the accuracy of JCR metrics and provide a wide range of descriptive data. This comprehensive dataset empowers researchers, publishers, editors, librarians, and funders to explore the key drivers of a journal's value.
Clarivate is committed to delivering unbiased, publisher-neutral information, enabling confident decision-making for stakeholders such as publishers, academic institutions, funders, and researchers.
The JCR profiles offer a wealth of journal intelligence metrics, allowing users to filter and rank journals by category. These metrics include the Journal Citation Indicator, Immediacy Index, Cited Half-Life, and the Journal Impact Factor. Descriptive data, such as open access content availability and top contributing institutions and regions, also enhance the understanding of journal profiles.
Researchers and stakeholders can access the Journal Citation Reports to explore available data, metrics, and analysis. Further insights into this year's release can be found through Clarivate's series of blogs. It's important to note that the changes implemented in the 2023 release apply from this year forward, with no alterations made to data from previous years.
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