Placement of Scholarly Works:  Quality Indicators

Presses (books and book chapters):

• Used in curricula
• Reviewed in scholarly journals (Amazon and Google Book Search will list)
• Multiple editions (e.g., now in its 8th edition)
• Part of a larger series (e.g., part of 5-minute Clinical Consult series)
• Suggested readings for board preparation
• Copies sold (e.g. Amazon sales rank or rank in category)
• Number of copies in libraries (see worldcat.org)

Professional Journals:

• Impact factor and rank in category (best known and most respected indicator available)
  • The Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are available online starting with the 2009 edition.
  • Prior years are available in hard copy from the Health Sciences Library Reserve Desk. Ellis Library has the complete set of Journal Citation Reports in the Ready Reference section, Z7403 .S32.
• Indexing (e.g. indexed in MEDLINE)
• Acceptance rate
  • Contacting the editor is, in many cases, the only way to find acceptance rates. Editor information is usually included on a journal’s web page.
  • The library has acceptance rate information for some journals. Contact us to see if we have acceptance rates for any titles you need.
  • Publishers are often reluctant or unable to give out acceptance rates for publications. We have information on publishers who have refused to provide acceptance rates (e.g., many Wiley and American Society of Microbiology titles).
  • If you have any acceptance rates, please send them to us, and we will add them to our list.
  • See MU Libraries Acceptance Rate Guide for further information.
• Scopus Journal Analyzer (Journal Analyzer tutorial (5 min video))
• Eigenfactor (about Eigenfactor)
• Google Scholar Top Cited Journals for Health and Medicine – ranked by h-index
• Nursing and Allied Health Resources section of the Medical Library Association (NAHRS/MLA) produces Selected List of Nursing Journals– provides information on acceptance rates, peer review status, proportion of scholarly articles, database/indexing coverage, and more.
• Scimago Journal Rank (SJR)
  • Factors considered for SJR journal rankings include:
    • H-Index
    • Total cites per journal
    • Total of published documents per journal
    • Cites per document

Papers in Conference Proceedings:

• Published in the scholarly journal (e.g., AHA abstracts published in Circulation)
• Number of attendees
• Indexing (e.g. indexed in Scopus, Compendex)
• Importance of the conference (e.g. international, national, state, regional conference; significance of association sponsoring conference)

Rating Individual Journal Articles

Times Cited

• Scopus allows a search for the number of times an article has been cited. Enter author or article information to search for articles in Scopus. Scopus offers cover-to-cover indexing 1996-date for 14,000 (mostly scientific) journals. Check Scopus coverage for a specific journal.Scopus Citation Tracker lets you view a table of cited references for an author by year from 1996-date. See Example. Your h-index is also available in the Citation Tracker.
• Web of Science Core Collection finds times cited as well.  After You can create a Citation Report in Web of Science which includes h-index.