Answered By: Laura Gleason
Last Updated: Aug 27, 2020     Views: 54

Impact Factor (IF) ranks journals by measuring the number of citations its articles receive. Impact Factor is one measurement of journal credibility and hotly debated as far as usefulness. 

Read this wiki for a working definition of "Impact Factor," the formula that is used to measure journals, and the reasons journals are ranked by this measurement. 

There is a free resource, Scimago Journal and Country Rank, that provides a journal rank by SJR indicator calculations and H index. On this site you can enter the journal's title or issn to see if it is included in their list of 28,606 journals. Their Scimago journal Rank indicator (SJR) is "a measure of  journal's impact, influence, or prestige. It expresses the average number of weighted citations in the selected year by the documents published in the journal in the previous three years." 

Google Scholar metrics has figures for the top 100 journal titles.

In addition, the library has a subject guide with more information about journal metrics