LibGuides: Social Work Research: Choosing & Assessing Journals

Find a Match

Wondering where to publish your research? Start by developing a list of potential journals that might fit your work.

Ask your mentors.
Find journals published by professional societies.
Search databases for work on similar topics.
Tools like Cabell's Directories and Ulrichsweb Serials Directory will generate a list of journals by subject or keyword. Cabell's also includes information about submission and review procedures.
Review the websites of potential journals. You'll usually find more about the journal's purpose and scope, and you can browse articles from recent issues. If it looks like a journal of interest, take the time to review their submission guidelines and learn about their review process.

Assess the Journals

Journal metrics such as Impact Factor, acceptance rates or h-indices can help you determine how a journal stacks up against other journals in the field and may help you determine where to submit your manuscript. These numbers can vary wildly between disciplines, so only compare the impact factor of a journal with other journals in the same discipline.

H-indices

An h-index is the highest number of articles a journal has published that have been cited at least than many times. So, a journal with an h-index of 57 has published 57 articles that have been cited at least 57 times. As the number of highly-cited articles rises, so does the h-index.

A true h-index considers citations over the journal's life (or all the years citations have been tracked by the tool doing the calculation). An h5-index looks at the most recent 5 years, and is often a better indicator of a journal's current influence.

Google Metrics
Google Metrics is a great source for finding an h5-index for education journals because Google Scholar's coverage of education literature is broader than other citation tracking tools (SSCI/Web of Science and Scopus).

Scimago Journal Ranking

Scimago
Scimago offers a variety of data points that are calculated based on citation data from Scopus. When calculating its main metric, the SJR Indicator, Scimago uses three previous years of publications (rather than the two years used to calculate Impact Factors) and considers the prestige of the journal where an article is cited.

H-indexes listed here may vary from those in Web of Science or Google Scholar simply because they all have different years of coverage for each title.

Impact Factor

A journal's Impact Factor is determined by taking the number of times articles within the journal have been cited over the previous two years and dividing by the number of articles published. Citations used for this calculation are based on Web of Science (Social Science Citation Index) data.

Journal Citation Reports
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is the only product that creates a true impact factor, and JCR doesn't provide broad coverage of education journals. If a particular journal is not covered by JCR, an impact factor will not be available and cannot be calculated.

Web of Science Article Prevalence

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Web of Science allows you to analyze search results by how many articles each journal has indexed within the database.

In order to see the top journals in your subject area, search by the general topic. Limit to an appropriate date range, like the past 5 years. Then click Analyze Results in the right sidebar. Choose the Source Titles tab to identify the journals with the most results in your subject area.
Updated weekly. The Web of Science Core Collection is a group of databases (Science Citation Index Expanded, 1900-present; Social Sciences Citation Index, 1900-present; Arts & Humanities Citation Index, 1975-present) that together cover more than 21,000 journals across all disciplines. The Emerging Sources Citation Index (2005-present) tracks thousands of additional journals that are being considered for inclusion in the main citation indexes. Other files track references from conference proceedings (1990-present) and citations to books (2005-present).
The Web of Science platform currently also provides temporary access to several databases that are not part of the Core Collection, including Biosis Citation Index, Data Citation Index, and Zoological Record.

Acceptance Rate

Acceptance rates for journals can sometimes be found in Cabell's Directories, though the databases is selective about which journals they track. If your journal isn't included, or an acceptance rate isn't listed, go to the journal website to see if it's available there, or try contacting the journal editor.

UT Libraries Resources & Services

Scholarly Communication Services
Scholarly Communication Services provides resources and expertise surrounding the scholarly publication cycle.

Journal Metric Comparison Chart
Use this chart to compare Impact Factor, h-index, and h5-index.

Journals Affiliated with Professional Societies

Journal Legitimacy & Predatory Publishers

Beall's List of Predatory Journals and Publishers
There are astonishing number of predatory journals and also what are called hijacked journals, which are web versions of legitimate journals which do not actually have websites. This is a list of the archived titles of predatory journals. NOTE: this is not a comprehensive list and potential authors should also think through the points below.

Select publishers have used the open access movement as a cover for taking advantage of scholars, especially early career researchers, to make a profit. To protect yourself from publishing scams, be skeptical when

There is no review process or the review process is unusually fast
No revision of your work is required
You can't find details about the editorial board
The journal doesn't clearly display guidelines, policies and fees or responses to related questions are vague
You receive a mass email soliciting papers
The reputation of authors who have published in the journal is questionable

In general, when you encounter a journal you're unfamiliar with, always take the time to investigate its legitimacy before choosing to submit your manuscript for review.

Journal Evaluation Tool (PDF)
Rele, Shilpa; Kennedy, Marie; and Blas, Nataly, "Journal Evaluation Tool" (2017). LMU Librarian Publications & Presentations. 40.