education research: journal rankings and citation reports
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Education Research: Journal Rankings and Citation Reports
• Your impacto Google Scholaro Publish or Perisho Web of Science
• Where to publisho “Best” journalso How to find them
• Along the wayo Discussion: How to raise profile of Education
journals/research? Or does it matter?
author impact, citation impact
journal impact
Assessing author/article impact
• Why?o Promotion/tenure
• How much have I published? Have my articles, etc. been cited? By whom? How often?
o Trace your (or someone else’s) research over time
o Find out the big names/big ideas
• How?o Tools like Google Scholar, Publish or Perish,
Web of Science, etc.
Google Scholar• Freely available; easy to use• Generally better coverage of social
sciences• Gives the big picture; the general idea• More current• Gives equal rank to everything • Inflated citation counts? or • What’s missing?
Get citations for non-journal materials (books, videos)
Harzing’s Publish or Perish• Uses Google Scholar data• Software download (
http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm#download)
• H-indexo a scholar with an index of h has published h
papers with at least h citations each (Jorge E. Hirsch)
o reflects both the number of publications and the number of citations per publication rather than simply total number of citations
Publish or Perish
H-index: 13M. Wesch has published 13 papers each of which has been cited in other papers at least 13 times.
Publish or Perish• Provides a way to manipulate Google
Scholar data
Web of Science• Impact of article/citation
oNumber of times cited
Web of Science• Cited Reference Searching
o to find articles whose authors cited your publications
o only includes citations from its core list of journals
All the articles that cited Nodding’s 2005 article in Educational Leadership:
Citation report
Use WoS to see all citations to one author
Keeping track…• Create citation alerts
Journal Impact• Why?
o Where should I publish? o What does it mean that my colleague/student/
new hire published in journal X?o How do I find out more about journal quality?
• How?o Journal Citation Reports(WoS) o H-index and other article-level toolso Cabell’s Publishing Directories
Journal Citation Reports• Standard source for journal rankings• Impact factor
o average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years
• Education is not well-represented• WoS: “…covering less than ten percent of
the journals in education” (Corby, 2008)
JCR
Does this reflect your view of “the best” journals?
• Problems with JCR/Impact factoro Only indexes highest quality, most
influential journalso Has roots in sciences (Corby, 2001)
o Pure/hard subjects have higher impact factors than soft/applied (Goodyear et al., 2009)
o Education is interdisciplinary by nature; education publishing more diverse (Goodyear et al., 2009)
Goodyear et al., 2009• Identified 11 primary journals
Where else?• Journal impact:
o Eigenfactoro SCImago Journal and Country RankoGoogle Scholar: Metrics
• Info about journals:oDirectory of Open Access JournalsoUlrichsweb
SCImago Journal and
Country Rank
Google Scholar Metrics
Where to publish?• Journal impact just one way to assess
journal• Other considerations:
o Peer-review? (Ulrichsweb)o Publisher/editorial board (well-known?)o Acceptance rates (Cabell’s)o Scope/ good fito High-visibility: Where is it indexed?
(Klingner, 2005)o Open access?
Ulrich’s• Peer-review, info about journal…
Cabell’s• Acceptance rates, type of review,
etc.
Publisher/journal websites• Submission guidelines, contact info, etc.
Search in article
database
Summary• Many tools available• Relying on just one: inaccurate
picture?• Use several tools/strategies to tell
more accurate story about a researcher/author
• Use several tools/strategies to select journal for publication
• Ask your Librarian for help
For more info and help…
• Graduate Education Research Guideo http://researchguides.library.brocku.ca/EDUCGraduate
• Jennifer Thiesseno [email protected] Ext. 3573
• Open Access Week Oct. 22-26o Sessions from 12-1 every day (more details on library
website)