Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Jul 2;21(4):877-882.
doi: 10.5811/westjem.2020.4.47030.

A Review of Journal Impact Metrics and Characteristics to Assist Emergency Medicine Investigators with Manuscript Submission Decisions

Robert M Rodriguez  1 , Virginia Chan  1 , Angela H K Wong  1 , Juan Carlos C Montoy  1
Affiliations

A Review of Journal Impact Metrics and Characteristics to Assist Emergency Medicine Investigators with Manuscript Submission Decisions

Robert M Rodriguez et al. West J Emerg Med. .

Abstract

Introduction: A crucial, yet subjective and non-evidence-based, decision for researchers is where to submit their original research manuscripts. The approach of submitting to journals in descending order of impact factor (IF) is a common but imperfect strategy. The validity of the IF as a measure of journal quality and significance is suspect, and a number of other journal impact scores have emerged, such that no one scale is universally accepted. Furthermore, practical considerations, such as likelihood of manuscript acceptance rates and times for decisions, may influence how authors prioritize journals. In this report, we sought to 1) review emergency medicine (EM) journal impact metrics, and 2) provide a comprehensive list of pertinent journal characteristics that may influence researchers' choice of submission.

Methods: We systematically reviewed five impact metrics (IF, H Index, CiteScore, Source-Normalized Impact per Paper, and SCImago Journal Rank) and other relevant characteristics of 20 EM journals.

Results: We found good to excellent agreement in ordinal rankings of four of the journal impact metrics, as measured by the Spearman rank correlation coefficient. The median acceptance rate for original research manuscripts in the EM category was 25% (interquartile range [IQR] 18, 31%), and the median initial decision time was 33 days (IQR 18, 56 days). Fourteen EM journals (70%) accepted brief reports, and 15 (75%) accepted case reports/images.

Conclusion: We recommend replication, expansion, and formalization of this repository of information for EM investigators in a continuously updated, open-access forum sponsored by an independent organization.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: By the WestJEM article submission agreement, all authors are required to disclose all affiliations, funding sources and financial or management relationships that could be perceived as potential sources of bias. No author has professional or financial relationships with any companies that are relevant to this study. There are no conflicts of interest or sources of funding to declare.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Descriptions of impact metrics.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Spearman rank-order correlation. IF, Impact factor; CS, CiteScore; SNIP, Source Normalized Impact per Paper; SJR, SCImago Journal Rank; H, H Index.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. National Library of Medicine. [Accessed March 17, 2020];MEDLINE®: Description of the Database. Available at: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/medline.html#:~:text=MEDLINE%20is%20the%20U....
    1. Brembs B, Button K, Munafò M. Deep impact: unintended consequences of journal rank. Front Hum Neurosci. 2013;7:291. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lozano GA, Larivière V, Gingras Y. The weakening relationship between the impact factor and papers’ citations in the digital age. J Am Soc Inf Sci Tech. 2012;63(11):2140–5.
    1. Falagas M, Kouranos VD, Arencibia-Jorge R, et al. Comparison of SCImago journal rank indicator with journal impact factor. FASEB J. 2008;22(8):2623–8. - PubMed
    1. Bradshaw CJA, Brook BW. How to rank journals. PLoS One. 2016;11(3):e0149852. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types