Ranking of addiction journals in eight widely used impact metrics

Abstract

Background and aims: Journal metrics assess impact upon the research literature, and are now used to assess individual researchers in hiring and promotion decisions. This study compared the ranking of addiction journals according to eight widely used metrics; assessed the correlations between journal rankings; and assessed changes over time in metric scores.

Methods: Data pertaining to the 2020 scores on eight metrics for 43 journals were obtained and the top 20 ranking in each compared and the correlations between rankings assessed. The Impact Factor was employed to assess changes over time.

Results: Ignoring the two categorization systems used by some metrics, 31 journals appeared in at least one metric top 20 and 11 in all eight. The top rank in each was occupied by one of three journals. Three-quarters of the correlations between rankings were above 6.0. The number of journals with an Impact Factor rose from 23 in 1997 to 38 in 2020, and the journals added tended to focus on addictions other than alcohol and drugs or have a specific focus.

Conclusions and discussion: The results indicate a concentration of journals at the top of the metrics and moderate to strong agreement between them, but almost three-quarters of journals appeared in at least one metric. The longitudinal data reflect both a broadening and specialization of the addiction field. The study limitations include exclusion of some journals and metrics.

Keywords: addiction research; bibliometrics; journal impact factors; journal metrics; substance abuse research.

Fig. 1.

Number of journals in JCR substance abuse category (1997–2020)^a Notes: ^a Journals that changed name could appear twice in the Substance Abuse category for some years (e.g, both Alcohol Research and Health and Alcohol Research-Current Reviews both appear in 2014, although they are the same journal). In such cases, only one journal is included in the count for that year. ^b It is not possible from the JCR data to know if any of the 23 journals in 1997 were newly added that year.

Fig. 2.

Addiction journals with the 10 highest JCR Impact Factors (1997–2020) Notes: ^a Journal of Behavioral Addictions and Cannabis & Cannabinoid Research are not in the JCR Substance Abuse category. ^b Date is the first year the journal was published under its present, or any former, tile(s). ^c This journal was titled the Journal of Studies on Alcohol before 2007. ^d This journal changed its title to Substance Use & Misuse after 1997. ^e The Journal of Substance Abuse was discontinued after 2001. ^f This journal’s previous titles were Alcohol Health & Research World (until 2000) and Alcohol Research & Health (2001–2013).