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H-index and journal ranking

H-index

H-index is a measurement of a certain author’s productivity and citation impact – how frequent he or she has been cited. It ought to be noted that it takes time to build up a h-index and that it is typically higher the longer a person has been active. H-index is defined as the number of publications that has been cited h or more times. Furthermore, the h-index depends on the research area at hand. Different ”citing cultures” will give that h-index for researchers within one area of research can be much higher than for researchers within another area.

If you want to state your h-index it is important that you indicate in which database you have got it, and from what point in time the h-index has been calculated. H-index can be calculated from Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. Note that different databases have different coverage for journals and therefore the h-index will also differ.

Index at journal level

Measurements at journal level, where a researcher has been published, is sometimes being used to evaluate the work of a researcher or a research group. If many researchers with a high h-index are being published in a journal this will increase the prestige of this journal. A journal is being judged based on its use and how great dissemination it has within the research community.

Journal Impact Factor (Clarivate Analytics) 

Journal Impactor Factor (JIF) is the most common indicator at journal level but there are also other relevant ranking systems. The JIF of a journal indicates the average number of citations during one year to articles published the two years before. JIF has been calculated on a yearly basis since 1975 and onwards and is being indexed in Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics), with data from Web of Science.

SJR (by SCImago) 

Scientific Journal Rankings (SJR) are calculated from articles and citations in the database Scopus, and its algorithms is somewhat different from Clarivate Analytics' Journal Impact Factor. SJR is being calculated over three years, limits self-citations and is also taking the SJR value for the journal containing the citations into account. You find SJR in Scopus.

SNIP 

SNIP is calculated with consideration to differences in citation practise by comparing the total number of citations in the citing journals. The impact for a single citation is given a higher value within subject areas where citations are not so common, and vice versa. SNIP is based on data from Scopus.

The Norwegian List

The Norwegian list is being used for both evaluation and distribution of research funding in Norway. The model is based on a register where scientific journals are being grouped into two levels. Level 1 implies scientific journals and level 2 contains the most prominent scientific journals within each research area. Level 2 should represent around 20% of all scientific publications. 

The Norwegian list

Page Manager: yens.wahlgren@lth.lu.se | 2020-12-15