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Faculty Resources & Services LibGuide: Assessing Research Impact

Contact Scholarly Communication Services

Scholarly Communication Services
LY3, Room 154
Phone: (561) 297-4318
scholarlycomm@fau.edu

For additional information on finding impact factors at author, journal, or citation levels, consult with the following LibGuides:

Find Impact Factors & Other Bibliometrics

Scholarly Publisher Sources & Web Sites

Journal Impact Factor (Journal Citation Reports)
FAU Libraries does not subscribe to Journal Citation Reports.  Please see the next tab, 'Journal Web Sites,' for ways to locate a journal impact factor.

Eigenfactor Score
Eigenfactor Scores through 2015 are freely provided on its web page.  Current Eigenfactor Scores can be found either through Journal Citation Reports or by visiting a journal's web page.  

Journal Web Sites

Journal-level metrics can often be found on a journal's website if it was given one.  See its "About" section, or "Journal Home," "Overview," or similar areas of the journal web site.  See the example and links below.

A journal's web site should also provide contact information for their editors and editorial board who may be able to advise.  

What if I can't find a journal's impact factor or metric?

The journal may not have an impact factor for a variety of reasons:

  • Publication norms by discipline:  Fields that rely on peer-reviewed journals for communicating scholarly or creative activity, or those with high citation density (that is, frequently or very highly cite previous works) use journal metrics more than fields that do not.  Many STEM fields use metrics while most in arts and humanities do not; the latter communicates more through monographs (books) or secondary sources, or by making creative works (musical scores, performances, art).
  • Indexing:  academic publishers (Elsevier or Clarivate Analytics) or organizations (SCImago, CTWS) generate their metrics from indexes that include select journals.  If a journal does not have a metric, it may not had been included in an index.
  • Age of publication:  blbliometrics are generated for a given year by analyzing a work or author's prior years of activity.  If a publication is less than 3 years old, it will not have enough data to create a bibliometric. Also, journals that are included in indexes are evaluated on its characteristics; the length of time it has been published is one of them.
  • Open Access publications:  its age may be a reason for not having an impact factor if it is less than 3 years old.  Also, some OA publications may not yet be included in the indexes of major academic publishers.
  • Location and language of publication: indexes include fewer journals that are published in emerging research nations in proportion to those published in western Europe and the U.S.  Indexes include more journals published in the English language and include fewer published in other world languages.