Journal Citation Reports 2021 release: now includes Arts & Humanities journals

This year’s edition of Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is now available. JCR is a very useful tool that lists Journal Impact Factors and other journal metrics.

This release:

  • 70% more content – partly due to inclusion of journal titles from the Arts & Humanities Citation Index and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)
  • New metric introduced: the Journal Citation Indicator
  • Arts & Humanities titles and ESCI titles are not given a Journal Impact Factor instead they have the new Journal Citation Indicator
  • Now includes Early Access articles
  • Revamped user interface – interactive visualisations, simpler navigation and contextual help make the JCR easier to use

JCR can help you:

– identify journals with the highest citation impact in your field

– find the most influential journals in which to publish

Each edition of JCR is published annually following the year of coverage – so the latest 2021 edition covers 2020 data.  The Reports monitor and exclude any journals that demonstrate anomalous citation behaviour. 

Journal Citation Indicator

The Journal Citation Indicator is a new field-normalized measurement of journal citation impact based on the previous 3 years of data (the Journal Impact Factor uses only 2 years). 

All journals in the JCR will have a Journal Citation Indictor (JCI) score, with the aim that it will be a single journal-level metric that can be easily interpreted and compared across disciplines. (Although there has already been some criticism. For example: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/06/journal-impact-factor-gets-sibling-adjusts-scientific-field and https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/05/24/journal-citation-indicator/).

A journal that has an average performance will have a JCI of 1.0. If the journal has performed well, it will have a number greater than 1.0. For example, a journal with a JCI of 2.0 performed two times better than the global average. Whereas a journal with a JCI of 0.5 performed half as well.

Help using JCR

Support materials are available:

Access and Searching JCR

To access JCR:

  • Logon to the University Portal
  • Select the Resources tab
  • Select A-Z list of online resources, then J, then Journal Citation Reports

The old Journal Citation Reports interface will remain available until the end of 2021 (there is a link on the home page of the new interface, under the Products option in the top righthand corner).

Clare Allan
Senior Research Librarian