The new Scopus CiteScore formula and the Journal Impact Factor: a look at top ranking journals and middle ranking journals in the Scopus categories of General Physics and Astronomy, Materials Science, General Medicine and Social Sciences

Phys Eng Sci Med. 2020 Sep;43(3):739-748. doi: 10.1007/s13246-020-00903-1.

Abstract

In June 2020 Elsevier announced that the CiteScore metric of journals underwent a change. This work examines the effect of these changes for 40 journals, chosen from the top five and middle five (ranked by CiteScore) journals in the subject areas of General Physics and Astronomy, Materials Science, Medicine, Social Sciences) and compares to the Journal Impact Factor. It is shown that in the data studied here, the new methodology is less susceptible to influence of the proportion of editorial material in a journal, but tends to favour journals in research fields that publish articles which get cited more quickly.

Keywords: Bibliometrics; Citations; Citescore; Clarivate analytics; Jif; Journal based metric; Journal impact factor; Library and information services; Scientometrics; Scopus.

Publication types

  • Editorial

MeSH terms

  • Astronomy / standards*
  • Data Mining
  • General Practice / standards*
  • Journal Impact Factor*
  • Materials Science / standards*
  • Periodicals as Topic / standards*
  • Physics / standards*
  • Social Sciences / standards*