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Journal Impact Factors & Cited Reference Searching

Journal impact factors

Impact factors are an indicator of the importance of a journal in relation to other journals in the same field.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR), from Thomson ISI, is a recognised authority in evaluating the impact of journals on the worldwide research community.

Journal Citation Reports:

  • comes in two editions, Science and Social Science
  • covers over 9,100 leading journals in over 200 disciplines
  • provides access to citation statistics from 1997 onwards
  • is useful for researchers wanting to identify journals relevant to their research  or in which to publish

New users might like to view the following training material on the Thomson web site:

Journal Citation Reports lists impact factors for a number of journals, however not every journal is analysed by JCR. If you can't find the journal you are looking for in JCR, try the publisher links below. Click on the appropriate title to find its impact factor:

Cited reference searching

It is important to keep up to date with who is researching and being cited in your area of interest. Cited reference searching allows you to find articles that have cited a previously published author or work. Some form of Cited reference searching or the ability to set up Citation Alerts is available in:

  • Academic Search Premier  
  • Business Source Premier
  • Cambridge Journals Online
  • CINAHL  
  • Emerald
  • Google Scholar  
  • Highwire Press
  • Journals@Ovid
  • Oxford Journals Online
  • PsycINFO
  • Sage Journals
  • Science Direct
  • Web of Science
  • Wiley InterScience (includes former Blackwell titles)

Each of these resources can be accessed via the Library's Databases and eJournals page.

ISIHighlyCited.com is a free gateway that provides information about the most significant scientists and scholars publishing today.

Current Contents Connect allows you to rank your search results. For example, you can search a topic and then rank the results by author to find out which authors are most prolific in this field. Alternatively, you can rank the results by journal title and see which journals are publishing articles in your area of interest.  This is very useful for keeping up to date and for identifying possible publishers for your work.