SCImago Journal & Country Rank: An Easy to Use Ranking Tool

With just one click, you can find out how many papers Hong Kong has published from 1996-2018, citations per document, the H Index and world ranking.

What is SCImago?

SCImago Journal & Country Rank  (SCImago) is built on data from the Scopus database. It covers over 30,000 journal titles and 239 countries. Each journal and country have a separate profile with data analysis charts. The user interface of SCImago is simple and user-friendly. Simple as SCImago may look, it provides a wide range of indicators and readily available analytics data.

SCImago Journal Rank Indicator (SJR)

SCImago uses a metrics unlike the Web of Science impact factor to rank journals. In short, instead of just counting the number of citations, SJR measures the average number of weighted citations received. The concept behind is that citations carry different weights according to the level of prestige of the citing journals. 

Explore SCImago

Users can access the data by using the three “EXPLORE” buttons on the front page: Journal Ranks, Country Ranks, and VIZ Tools.

Journal Ranks (1999 – 2018)

The initial page is a journal title list of the most recent year ranked by SJR. Users can do filtering and sorting to get the data they want to display. Moreover, the dataset can be downloaded as an Excel file.

The first two pull-down menus include 27 broad thematic areas and 313 specific subject categories. Users can click the journal title to view the journal profile.

Country Ranks (1996 – 2018)

The design and functions of this interface are similar to Journal Ranks, only that it has fewer filters. Let’s see where Hong Kong is in the ranking list.

Click on the Country name will bring up charts that reveal more information about a country’s publishing profile not shown in the list, such as the number of documents by subject areas.

 

VIZ Tools

Under this section are some interesting charts and graphics; some of them are interactive. The one I want to introduce is the Compare function. It allows users to compare up to 6 publications or countries using different SCImago indicators. We can use the “Compare Countries” function to compare Hong Kong with our competitor Singapore simply by entering their names in the box provided. After that, various charts including the following one will show up. In addition, users can click on the table icon to view, copy and paste the raw data.

SCImago Journal Rank and Journal Citation Reports

One should not directly compare SJR with Journal Citation Reports (JCR) as they employ two different metrics. SJR measures by weighted citations, of which citations from prestigious journals have a higher weight than those from journals with a smaller citation network. Whereas JCR counts all citations as equal. Therefore, SJR should be viewed as an alternative means to rate journal impact. Whether it will develop into a competitive tool to JCR is yet to be seen.

— By Poon Sau Ping, Research Support Services, Library

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