Publishing: Quality indicators

Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) 2018 Journal List 

The 2023 Journal List will be developed in 2022

• Funding and reputation - articles need to be on the list to count for the ERA
• Criteria - journals are scholarly and contain peer reviewed original research
• Australian relevance - list compiled in consultation with universities and peak bodies, and includes titles where Australian researchers are actively publishing

• Recognised Australian list for assessing quality of scholarly business journals (accounting, marketing, economics, etc.)

• Provides conference and journal rankings in computer science
• Australian relevance - coordinated by Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia

Clarivate Analytics Master Journal List

Essential Science Indicators Journal List

• Publications indexed by Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science Core Collection must meet selection criteria
• Articles need to be in this subset of journals indexed by Web of Science to be included in Essential Science Indicators - Highly Cited Papers, Hot Papers and Highly Cited Researchers

• Publications indexed by Scopus must meet selection criteria

Journal's own website

UniSA databases

Cabell's Directories

Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory

• Peer review is a major indicator of quality in academic publishing
• Some databases and lists only include peer reviewed journals
• Cabell's Directories (selection policy) and Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory indicate which journals are peer reviewed but lists may be out-of-date and it is always best to check the journal site itself

• Find journal metrics including impact factor and rank in category for approx. 9,500 'science' journals and 3,500 'social science' journals
• A standard source of journal performance metrics for certain disciplines but with minimal coverage of journals in others (especially the humanities)
• In 2021 expanded to over 20,000 journals by including all titles in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Emerging Sources Citation Index - these titles have the new Journal Citation Indicator metric (not the Impact Factor)
• See the Finding Journal Impact Factors and journal rank in a category Research Quick Guide

• Find journal metrics including CiteScore, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) and rank in category
• Broader journal coverage than JCR with approx. 25,000 titles
• Metrics available for several hundred book and conference proceedings series

• Free visualisation tool providing a quick way to view journal rank based on the SJR metric and Scopus data. Unlike Scopus, it provides rank in category and quartiles based on SJR
• See the Finding journal rank using SCImago Journal & Country Rank Research Quick Guide
• Warning - intrusive advertising now makes this tool less usable

• Inclusion indicates relevance to discipline
• Discoverable by other scholars

• Not available for all journals - Cabell's provides acceptance rates for some titles
• The lower the acceptance rate, the higher the perceived quality of the journal