It is the most important coefficient of citation analysis so far, which can express the quality of a particular journal. An impacted journal is a journal that is excerpted in the Journal Citation Reports database and thus has a specific journal impact factor value assigned to it. Journal Citation Reports is a sister product to the Web of Science database, and the JCR calculates indicators over the contents of the Web of Science database.

For example, a journal impact factor value of 8.0 in the current year indicates that, on average, articles published in the last two years have been cited eight times within journals that are also excerpted in the Journal Citation Reports database.

Example: SOCIOLOGICKY ČASOPIS - CZECH SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW - ISSN 0038-0288

The JIF value for 2022 for this journal is 0.4.

• The Article Influence Score (AIS) is a similar indicator to the Impact Factor (IF).
• Unlike the traditional IF, it does not take into account journal self-citations and also takes into account the potential influence of citations - citations from more prestigious journals carry more weight and vice versa. In addition, AIS is more resistant to unfair practices ("citation fraternities"). Despite these differences, there is a positive correlation between AIS and IF. One could say that AIS is the impact factor for the twenty-first century. Used in national science evaluation since 2017.

• journal ranking indicator in Scopus 
• Also used in national evaluation since 2017.

Impacted journals are ranked within their fields according to various metrics (e.g., impact factor, AIS, SJR, CiteScore). Journals within a field are ranked according to the selected metric from highest to lowest. According to the position in the ranking, the following can then be calculated:

The set of journals can be divided into 4 quartiles (Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4) or 10 deciles (D1 to D10) according to the highest to lowest metric number. For example, in the case of quartile by JIF, the journals are ordered by JIF from highest to lowest and the first 25% are in the first quartile, the next 25% in the second quartile, etc. Similarly, the first 10% are placed in the first decile. 

The most prestigious journals are in the first quartile (Q1) and the first decile (D1). Some journals are ranked in multiple fields, so they may have multiple quartile and decile values.

These metrics are tracked in multiple sources, but the primary one is Journal Citation Reports, or you can use Web of Science, which only provides basic data.

How to find data in Journal Citation Reports

1/ Search the Journal Citation Reports database for a specific journal, ideally by ISSN.

2/ In the Journal Impact Factor field, you can see the current JIF value and the JIF trend over the last years.

(similarly, these metrics can also be searched in the Web of Science database - by clicking on the journal name)

Ex. SOCIOLOGICAL JOURNAL - CZECH SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW - ISSN 0038-0288

According to JIF for 2022, the journal is ranked 140th out of 149 ranked journals within the field of Sociology. It is therefore included in:

4. Quartile / Q4,

10. decile / D10 (the value must be calculated manually),

percentile - 6,4. 

Image: Example of the display of the classification of the journal Sociological Journal according to JIF in the field of Sociology

How do I find impacted journals in my field of study? 

1/ In the Journal Citation Reports database, select "Categories".

2/ "Categories" are grouped into large groups, e.g. the group "Social Sciences, General" includes 41 categories in the social sciences - the right arrow will take you to a listing of the categories in that group. Choose the category that best fits the topic of the paper or your field of study and click on it to see a list of journals classified in that category.

Individual categories can appear in multiple indexes of the Web of Science database (SSCI - Social Sciences Citation Index, ESCI - Emerging Sources Citation Index) (note this should change from 2024) and journals can be included in multiple categories at the same time.

3/ The list of journals within a category can be sorted e.g. by number of citations, JIF level, quartile, or a filter tab appears on the left, which offers additional options for working with the list, e.g. to set up multiple categories displayed simultaneously, to limit the search to certain quartiles or JIF ranges, etc.

4/ The final edited list of journals can then be downloaded from the top right via the "Export" button.