Journal Citation Reports Version 4.0 Expands its Analytical Capabilities
Philadelphia, PA, USA-London, UK - June 22, 2005 - Since
its creation in the 1960’s, Journal Citation Reports® (JCR®)
and its pioneering “Impact Factor” have set the standard in providing
a systematic, objective way to evaluate, categorize, and compare the world's
leading scholarly journals and to gauge their influence on the global research
community.
Today, Thomson Scientific (a business of Thomson Corporation) announced that
the soon-to-be-released JCR version 4.0 offers expanded analytical
capabilities beyond the journal level to include the category level. Data at
the category level provides performance metrics that can be used to understand
the journal content, and analyses that show the citation dynamics common to
a large collection of articles and journals in a subject.
The resulting data deliver a simple and powerful framework for evaluating
the performance of scholarly journals, by enhancing the metrics originally created
by Dr. Eugene Garfield, founder and chairman emeritus of ISI®. The enhancements
have transformed JCR into an essential tool that librarians and information
professionals can use to identify trends in journals coverage, making it easier
to manage collections.
“Last year we added a new, graphical display and smoother product navigation
to increase our users’ awareness of the rich citation relationships that
underlie Impact Factor,” said Jim Pringle, vice president of development,
Thomson Scientific. “With these latest enhancements, we have added a layer
of analysis at the category level, to help users understand the citation characteristic
of large collections of articles. We’re confident these features will
help provide a better context for considering the performance of any individual
journal.”
JCR version 4.0 also offers a new Related Journals list. The Related
Journals list measures the concentration of citations between two journals or
between a journal and a category—revealing closely-related, interrelated
titles. Researchers can use the list to identify journals they may want to consider
reading or publishing articles. Librarians can build collections that include
the most relevant journals in a particular area. And publishers will be able
to spot competitor journals and the most effective advertising opportunities.
About JCR
The Journal Citation Reports provides quantitative tools
for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing journals. The impact factor
is one of these. It is a metric that is useful in clarifying the significance
of absolute citation frequencies. There have been many innovative applications
of journal impact factors. The most common involve market research for publishers
and others but, primarily, the JCR provides librarians a tool for the
management of library collections.
