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.

New from Journal Citation Reports

This was picked up from Wouter Gerritsma's blog, WoW! Wouter on the Web

Thomson Reuters are upgrading the journal citation reports to provide:

--Eigenfactor™ Metrics, which are based on the network of journal to journal relationships
--five-year Impact Factor
--journal Self Citations – their contribution to the Journal Impact Factor calculation.
--graphic displays of Impact Factors, and
--Rank-in-Category tables for journals covering multiple disciplines.

More information at Wouter's site and from Thomson Reuters' press release