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CHAPTER 6

Journal Citation Analysis

6.1 SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS
Most scientists agree that there are top journals and journals of lower
standing. We can further distinguish between general journals, say multi-
disciplinary ones, and specialized ones. Over the years, science has become
more and more specialized, resulting in a relative decrease in the number
of general journals. This specialization is also visible in most fields and is
not a recent development at all. Just as an example we mention the journal
Physical Review which split in 1970 into Physical Review A (dealing with
atomic, molecular, and optical physics), Physical Review B (condensed mat-
ter and materials physics), Physical Review C (nuclear physics), and Physical
Review D (particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology). A fifth member of
the journal, Physical Review E, was launched in 1993 dealing with statisti-
cal, nonlinear and soft matter physics. The best known multidisciplinary
journals with a long history are Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences USA (in short, PNAS). These three journals
are also top journals. Current Science (India) and the Science Bulletin (for-
merly Chinese Science Bulletin) (China) are general journals of a more local
interest. Recently, the phenomenon of electronic-only journals, combined
with the phenomenon of open access journals covering all sciences, or at
least a large part of them, has given rise to new, general mega-journals.
Prototypes of such mega-journals arePLOS ONE (Public Library of
Science One) and Scientific Reports,but PeerJ (restricted to the biological
and medical sciences) falls into this category as well.
Each field has its own top journals. It is not surprising that scientists
try to publish in one of their field’s top journals. As a consequence, these
journals receive large numbers of submissions, their editors can easily
reject many and—if they make good choices—increase the impact of
their journals. This self-reinforcing mechanism is an example of the
Matthew effect (discussed further on in Chapter 9: The Informetric
Laws). Because of the rise of citation indexes, and in particular the
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) (see further Section 6.13), the vague cri-
terion “reputation” has increasingly been replaced by “receiving many

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