Thomson Reuters Unveils 2016 Ranking of Most Influential Scientific Journals

More than 11,000 journals in 81 counties receive their Journal Impact Factor
ALEXANDRIA, VA — The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters announced the 2016 update of its Journal Citation Reports® (JCR), the world’s most influential resource for evaluating peer-reviewed publications and the source of annual journal metrics, including the Journal Impact Factor (JIF).

The Journal Citation Reports provides an assessment of a journal’s standing in scholarly literature through the objective evaluation of quantifiable, statistical information. The analysis comprises citation data, impact and influence metrics, and millions of cited and citing journal data points from the Web of Science, the industry’s leading citation indices in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

The 2016 release, with 2015 citation data for literature within the sciences and social sciences, features 11,365 journal listings in 234 disciplines; 81 countries are represented. A total of 239 journals received their first JIF; 57 percent of journals saw an increase in JIF from last year and 42 percent saw a decrease. Additionally, 18 journals were suppressed to ensure the integrity of the reports. Suppressed journals are re-evaluated after a year for reconsideration in the JCR.

The journal selection process is an ongoing exercise focused on identifying, evaluating, and selecting the most important and influential international and regional journals for coverage in the Web of Science. Once the requisite three consecutive years of known source item counts are available, the data for each listed journal are analyzed and published in the JCR.

“Being able to glean meaningful insights into a journal’s influence is a critical component in the journal evaluation process for publishers, researchers and librarians,” said Emmanuel Thiveaud, head of research analytics of IP & Science at Thomson Reuters. “By quantifying the impact of thousands of journals around the world with reliable, consistent methodology, we continue to provide powerful and reliable metrics that are meaningful to the scientific community.”

Exclusively available as a module within Thomson Reuters InCites™, an integrated web-based platform for measuring research output and impact, monitoring trends and benchmarking articles, journals, institutions and people, the JCR comprises citation data, impact and influence metrics and millions of cited and citing journal data points from the Web of Science™. JCR and the InCites platform also enable users to perform a comprehensive, rich and deep analysis and exploration of journals and the specific articles within a publication.