While journal impact metrics like CiteScore and Impact Factor can provide useful information, it's important to approach these rankings with caution.

These metrics have several limitations:

• They don't necessarily reflect the quality of individual articles in the journal
• They can be manipulated through various practices
• They may disadvantage niche or emerging fields
• They often favor established journals and can slow innovation
• They may not accurately represent the impact of research in fields with different citation practices
• Major citation databases like Web of Science and Scopus only count citations in journals they track themselves, giving an incomplete picture of scholarly impact

Researchers should consider these metrics as just one factor among many when evaluating journals, alongside the journal's scope, peer review process, and alignment with their own research goals and values.

A journal is considered to have a "high impact" if the articles it publishes are frequently cited.  A number of resources are available that rank/score journals by their impact/influence. For details on what these journal-level (and other) metrics look like, please see our guide on research impact linked below.

Content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and is adapted from "Identifying Appropriate Journals for Publication" by University of Alberta Health Sciences Library which is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0