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Resource Spotlight: Journal Citation Reports

April 16, 2019 - 9:49am by Caitlin Meyer

Welcome to Resource Spotlight! The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library provides access to an incredible array of databases, e-book collections, software and more. In this series of posts, we’ll be showcasing highlights from our collection.

Choosing where to publish can be a difficult decision. Who writes in certain journals? Are they being read? Fortunately, Journal Citation Reports can help answer some of these questions.

Published by Clarivate, the company that runs Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports (JCR) has information on more than 11,000 journals from around the world. Leveraging the depth of Web of Science’s collection, the JCR tracks which articles, and therefore journals, are being cited in new literature and distills that information into easily digestible Journal Impact Factor metrics. 

Each journal in the report has a profile page that outlines its research impact metrics over time, puts the metrics into context within subject categories, and highlights top-performing articles. You can also see the geographic distribution of authors for that journal, as well as a list of organizations that have written the most content. 

Since ‘good’ research impact indicators and publishing frequency vary widely by field, the “Browse by Category” function on the homepage can give you insight into what the publishing landscape looks like in a particular discipline. You can see how many journals there are in that field, how often they publish, how many articles come out per year, and the median journal impact.  

Journal Citation Reports can be accessed directly or by opening up the Web of Science and selecting JCR at the top. 

Feel free to contact the library with any JCR or research impact questions, and keep an eye out for our Research Impact Basics class.