View by category
Back to all metricsSJR measures the prestige of citations received by a journal. The methodology is similar to that of Google PageRank. It weights the value of a citation depending on the field, quality and reputation of the journal that the citation comes from, so that “all citations are not equal.” SJR also takes differences in the behavior of academics in different disciplines into account and can be used to compare journals in different fields. The weighted average SJR value for all journals in Scopus is 1.000.
SJR expresses the average number of weighted citations received in the selected year by the documents published in the selected journal in the three previous years, --i.e. weighted citations received in year X to documents published in the journal in years X-1, X-2 and X-3. Read the full methodology on the SCImago website
As with CiteScore, the Scimago group produces a percentile value for each ASJC associated to the Scopus Source. SciVal applies the same rules of always displaying the highest percentile value for the year, unless a specific subject category is selected - in which case the percentile linked to that subject category is displayed.
For example the journal of Aquatic Botany is linked to two ASJCs, Plant Science and Aquatic Science and in 2018 the SJR percentiles are 75 and 66. If no subject area is selected when viewing results containing the journal, the higher (75) percentile is selected for 2018. If Aquatic Science is selected, then the 66th percentile is used.
Download a file containing the SJR metric, along with the percentiles for each title per year.
Newly added journals will receive SJR metrics in the next yearly calculation round (usually in June), from the year they are added and for all previous years. The first journal metric values for SJR are available for 1999. For Scholarly Output published in the range 1996-1999, the journal metric value for 1999 is used.
Note: Like CiteScore, once calculated the SJR metrics are static. The only change is that metrics are calculated for the new year.
SJR is a:
- Citation Impact metric
Full details about SJR can be found on the Scimago Journal & Country Rank website
- Benchmark the Scopus Sources or groups of Scopus Sources that are any size and that fall within any fields of research – SJR is field-normalized
- Look at publishing activity in a way that is difficult to manipulate
- Investigate activity during the early stages of a new strategy when publications are just starting to appear, or the scholarly output of early-career researchers – the SJR of the journals can be used as a proxy measure of potential citation impact
- The objective is to judge an entity’s publications based on their actual performance, rather than based on the average of a journal:
- A publication may appear in a journal with a very high SJR value, and not itself receive any citations; even the most highly cited journals in the world contain publications that have never been cited.
- A publication may be very influential and have received many citations, without being published in a journal with a high SJR value; journals which do not rank very highly in the data universe may still contain very highly cited publications.
- Entities are small and there may be gaps in their output within the Scopus coverage. A single missing publication from a small data set will have a significant negative impact on apparent performance. It is possible that some publications for a journal are not indexed in Scopus. Although in general this can be a small percentage of publications, we advise users to be vigilant and to bear this possible limitation in mind.
- Citation Count, Citations per Publication, Field-Weighted Citation Impact, Scholarly Output, CiteScore, SNIP, Publications in Journal Quartiles and Publications in Top Journal Percentiles which can give a different perspective into the journal’s performance
- The set of all other “time-independent metrics”, which provide useful, reliable information immediately upon publication and do not rely on the passing of time for useful data to accumulate: Scholarly Output, Subject Area Count, Scopus Source Title Count, Collaboration, and Academic-Corporate Collaboration
Did we answer your question?
Related answers
Recently viewed answers
Functionality disabled due to your cookie preferences