LINUS July 1996

CD-ROM Highlights

Journal Citation Reports

For an essential, comprehensive and unique guide to scientific and technical publishing use the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by the Institute of Scientific Information. JCR analyses information from nearly 6,000 of the world's leading journals and its coverage is both multidisciplinary and international. It includes all specialities in the social sciences, science and technology from over 3,000 publishers in 60 nations. Most importantly, the JCR is the only source of citation data on these journals. It provides a set of quantitative tools for ranking, evaluating, categorizing and comparing journals. It helps to answer questions like:

What are the largest journals?

JCR ranks journals by the number of articles published in the current year. It allows you to compare journals in a particular speciality or in a broader field.

What journals are frequently used?

JCR also ranks journals by the number of times they are cited in the current year. This tells you how often a journal was formally referenced by researchers.

What are the 'hottest' journals?

JCR uses the 'immediacy index' which is the average number of times a journal's current articles are cited in the same year they are published. This index thus indicates journals which publishes the latest research in the fast-moving specialities.

What journals have the highest impact?

JCR reports the average number of current citations to the articles a journal has published in the previous two years. This allows you to compare a journal's 'impact factor' with the average impact for an appropriate set of peer publications on the baseline for all JCR indexed journals.

Adapted from JCR : Journal Citation Reports. Printed guide to the microfiche edition. Philadelphia, ISI : 1994.

The Science JCR and the Social Science JCR on Windows are now available on CD-ROM. Please ask for it at the Central Library Information Desk.