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Welcome!

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A plate of chocolate chip cookies.
Welcome!

Hello, Pubex, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Below are some pages you might find helpful. For a user-friendly interactive help forum, see the Wikipedia Teahouse.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, please see our help pages, and if you can't find what you are looking for there, please feel free to ask me on my talk page or place {{Help me}} on this page and someone will drop by to help. Again, welcome! Randykitty (talk) 16:16, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Journal rankings

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Please don't add tables with journal rankings to journal articles. It's already hard enough to update impact factors every year, adding more metrics just makes that task harder. In addition, for better or for worse, the sole metric that most people care about is the IF. Please see WP:JWG for advice on what kind of content for journal articles that we look for. Updating IFs is more than welcome, however. Happy editing! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Randykitty (talk • contribs) 16:36, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Randykitty and ARandomName123:
Thank you very much for your message and for the time you invest in maintaining consistency across journal articles on Wikipedia.
I fully understand your concern that adding multiple metrics beyond the Impact Factor (IF) can increase the workload for editors, especially since updating even IFs annually is already a substantial task. I’ve also reviewed the recommendations at WP:JWG as you suggested, and I appreciate your effort in keeping the standards focused and manageable.
That said, I’d like to share a perspective on why, in some cases, adding journal rankings within subject categories can provide readers with helpful context that goes beyond what the IF alone can offer:
  • While the IF is the most recognized metric, it gives a single value without indicating the journal’s relevance or position within specific disciplines. For many users — researchers, students, or those evaluating where to publish — *disciplinary rankings are far more actionable*.
  • A single IF doesn’t tell the whole story: a journal can be highly ranked in one category but average or lower in another. For example:
  • International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology (with IF=3.00) has:
  • Q1, Rank #34/221 in Agricultural and Biological Sciences
  • Q2, Rank #67/147 in Environmental Science
  • Q3, Rank #222/359 in Environmental Sciences (via JCI)
A user interested in agricultural or biological impact would see it as highly ranked, while someone focused on environmental science might view it as more middle-tier. The IF alone (3.00) does not convey this nuance.
  • Quartile ranking (Q1, Q2, etc.) is an important index in many countries — including in academic promotions and grant evaluations. In such contexts, the journal’s rank within its category often carries more weight than its raw IF.
  • These ranking metrics are generally updated only once a year, which means they don’t require continuous maintenance like fast-changing numerical statistics might.
Of course, I understand the need to avoid clutter and keep Wikipedia articles easy to update and interpret. That’s why I’ve tried to design the ranking table to be:
  • visually clear
  • minimally intrusive
  • simple to edit
  • and still delivering meaningful information to users who need it.
Perhaps a good compromise might be to include such rankings selectively, when they are notably relevant to the scope of the journal, and when they clearly enhance the reader’s understanding of the journal’s role in specific academic fields — all while avoiding unnecessary complexity.
Thanks again for your thoughtful message and for guiding editors like myself in aligning with community practices. I’m happy to revise or adapt my contributions as needed, and I genuinely value the constructive spirit of your feedback.
Happy editing! Pubex (talk) 11:10, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi, your assertion that the IF "gives a single value without indicating the journal’s relevance or position within specific disciplines", is incorrect: The JCR provides rankings in many categories (even if this particular example is in just one category). I'm not a fan of these rankings either, but at least they are based on a metric (the IF) that almost all researchers care about. That is not the case for the Citescore: most academics have no idea what it is and even if they do, it's not a metric they care about, which, for better or for worse, is the IF. Also, in the above rankings you give one that is "via JCI". In fact, this is a ranking by JCI (Journal Citation Indicator), which is a metric devised by Clarivate that is quite different from the IF. Having WP editors decide when a certain measure should be included is not a good compromise at all. If you'd have a reliable source independent of a journal or publisher that discusses such rankings and/or the Citescore, that would be another matter, but it is not something I've ever seen, far as I remember. --Randykitty (talk) 17:30, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again for your helpful reply and for sharing the link to the Category:Articles with outdated impact factors — you're absolutely right, it’s a real challenge, with over 700 articles needing updates.
I’m planning to gradually help with updating IFs across articles where I can. I appreciate the importance of keeping things manageable and consistent.
Also, just to clarify a key point:
The Impact Factor (IF) does give a single numerical value for a journal, calculated based on citations per article over a specific period (usually two years). However, it does not indicate the journal’s relevance or position within specific disciplines unless it's compared within a specific category or field.
For example: a journal in neuroscience might have an IF of 5, and so might a journal in general surgery.
But that same IF may place them in very different percentile rankings within their respective fields. Quartile rankings (Q1, Q2, etc.) are based on the distribution of IFs within a specific subject category, allowing for fairer comparisons across disciplines. Tools like Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and Scopus (SJR) provide both the IF and the field-specific quartile, which is more meaningful for judging a journal’s influence within its domain.
As a real example, the International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology (IF = 3.00) has:
Q1, Rank 34/221 in Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Q2, Rank 67/147 in Environmental Science
— both rankings based purely on the IF of 3.00.
Thanks again for engaging in this discussion — I’ve found your input very valuable.
Best, Pubex (talk) 16:11, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Those cats are maintained automatically, given the "year field" in the journal infobox. If there's no infobox but the IF is only mentioned in the text (or not at all), the journal is not included in these cats. As for the rankings, I don't understand what you are saying. Both Scopus and JCR give one main metric, the Citescore and IF, respectively, which they both rank in thematic groups. Of these, only the IF gets attention from the vast majority of authors. (Note that both Scopus and JCR list several other metrics, too. I have yet to see any evidence that anybody pays any attention of those other metrics). Note that we sometimes do include rankings based on the IF (e.g., The New England Journal of Medicine)x. --Randykitty (talk) 17:29, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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