Research Impact for Fine Arts and Music

Why collect journal impact metrics?

Some academic journals are more prestigious than others, and cited more often.

If you publish articles in higher prestige journals, and these articles are cited, then you can use particular metrics that may support your research application.

Want some help or advice? Make an appointment with a librarian to discuss your needs.

Book a research consultation

Scopus generates the following metrics:

• SJR (Scimago Journal and Country Rank) is a measure of scientific influence of a journal. Music Therapy practitioners may find this metric useful.
• SNIP (Source Normalised Impact per Paper) is an index based on the number of citations in a subject field. It is a contextual index, as it takes into consideration the article's disciplinary area. 
• CiteScore is a measure that considers how many citations a journal has. It is based on a comparison between the current year and the previous three years.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are generated by Web fo Science (WoS), and incorporate a number of metrics:

• JIF (Journal Impact Factor) is a calculation of the number of citations received by a journal, compared with other journals within the Web fo Science database.
• A journal's quartile indicates its ranking in the total list of journals within the same category:

NB Not all journals will be found using these tools. 

Scopus tools (SNIP, SJR, CiteScore):

1. Log into Scopus and click Sources in the top menu.
2. Search for a journal title or ISSN. If there is a match in the database, you can review each metric beside it's name in the results list.

Web of Science tools (JIF and Quartiles):

1. Log into Web of Science and click on Journal Citation Reports at the top of the screen.
2. Search for a journal title. If there is a match in the database you will be taken to a table of metrics for that journal. Click on the most recent year, and record the Journal Impact Factor.

• To access the journal's citation reports, click on the title of the journal.
• From the citation reports, you can access the rank of the journal, quartile, category/ies (eg Rehabilitation) and other key indicators.

For example, Journal of Music Therapy is in the second quartile (Q2) for the year 2017, and has a ranking of 28 out of 69 journals in the category of Rehabilitation.

Top journal percentiles in Web of Science:

1. Go to Web of Science.
2. Search for your name variants.
3. Click on the journal title in the list of results. The impact factor and quartile information will be shown in a pop-up window. (Unfortunately, this data is not downloaded with WoS records).
4. Repeat for each journal, and manually calculate the percentage and number in Q1/Q2 journals.

Top journal percentiles in SciVal:

1. Go to SciVal.
2. Go to Benchmarking.
3. Select yourself as researcher.
4. Select either (i) Chart OR (ii) Table.

(i) Chart: Set y-axis to Publications in Top Journal Percentiles and x-axis to Publication Year. Under 'Show as' choose either Percentage or Total value.

(ii) Table: Set Metric 1 to Publications in Top Journal Percentiles and Metric 2 to Publication Year. Under 'Show as' choose either Percentage or Total value.

(i) Chart:

(ii) Table:

Top citation outputs in SciVal:

1. Go to SciVal.
2. Go to Benchmarking.
3. Select yourself as researcher.
4. Select (i) Chart OR (ii) Table.

(i) Chart: Set y-axis to Scholarly Output and x-axis to Outputs in Top Citation Percentiles. Under "Show as' choose Percentage, and under 'Show the outputs in top' choose 25%.

(ii) Table: Set Metric 1 to Scholarly Output, and Metric 2 to Outputs in Top Citation Percentiles. Under 'Show as' choose Percentage, and under 'Show the outputs in top' choose 25%.

(i) Chart:

(ii) Table: