27 February 2009

Journal ranking - ISI, etc.

Following ISI's introduction of a 5-year Journal Impact Factor measure, I took another look at the position of Information Research and found that its 5-year JIF is 1.309, which ranks it 16th out of 56 in ISI's rather curious list. However, when we look at the 'general purpose' LIS journals, leaving out the niche journals, like Scientometrics, and those journals that are not really in the LIS field, like MIS Quarterly, and ARIST, which is an annual serial rather than a journal, we find IR in the fifth position, headed by Information Management, JASIST, IP&M, and Journal of Documentation.

IR's climb up the ranking lists is recognized by the Australian Research Council's draft journal ranking for its Excellence in Research initiative (which will form the basis, if I understand things aright, of its equivalent of the UK Research Assessment Exercise) - IR appears as an A* journal, along with those mentioned above.

Thanks to John Lamp of Deakin University for making the list available.

2 comments:

  1. Congratutions with this achievement. I just cheked it, and it is indeed quite a remarkable position for an OA journal in this field.
    I will certainly consider it soon after I've finished my draft publication.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey, glad you found the ERA list useful! It's amazingly popular - over 100,000 accesses since I put it up June last year. I just couldn't cope with the idea of a 21,500 line Excel file!

    On the standing of OA journals - I really think we have to stop being almost apologetic about OA and quality. In my discipline (information systems) the IBM Systems Journal and Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems are highyl ranked, long standing OA journals.

    Cheers
    John

    ReplyDelete