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Environmental and Geographical Science Library Guide

How to find information - a library guide for Environmental and Geographical Science students at UCT.

What is a Journal Impact Factor?

Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a calculation of how many times the articles in a journal are cited by others.

It is a journal metrics and it does not apply to researchers or institutions.

Usually, higher JIF is an indication of higher visibility of a journal to researchers in a field. It is also a rough indication of how the journal is considered within a field of research.

Locating the Impact Factor

 

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is a database used to locate

  • journal metrics (eg. Journal Impact Factor),  
  • list of journals by Web of Science category or by publisher or by country,
  • potential journals for publications from indexed journals.

 

To use Journal Citation Reports,

  1. Open Journal Citation Report from the UCT Libraries Databases A-Z list. 
  2. You will be prompted to log in using your UCT network login credentials. Then you are ready to explore the platform
  • To explore a specific journal's metric for the most recent or historical year, you may use the default search box to search for a desired journal title or its ISSN number.

 

For more information about Journal Citation Reports (JCR), explore JCR reources.

 

Controversy

 

Some things to be aware of:

  1. JIF is a quantitative assessment and does not include qualitative information
  2. Results vary among disciplines so it would be worthwhile to make comparisons within a particular discipline
  3. The IF was created to assess a journal not an author. An author's work may have a larger impact beyond a specific journal.

 

Garfield's paper entitled The Agony and the Ecstasy - The History and Meaning of the Journal Impact Factor provides further insights into the orgin and use of the Impact Factor.

Additional info about journals

 

1. The database, Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, provides the following info about a journal: peer reviewed or not, open access, publisher, when published  (i.e. when publications started), etc.

 

2. The “Accredited Journals List” on the UCT Libraries website provides info about the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) list of approved journals.