Research Metrics & Scholarly Impact

Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is the most well known journal-level metric.  In its infancy it was used to help make decisions on which journals should be included in a library collection.  The calculation for JIF is citations garnered in the last two years divided by the number of articles in the last two years for a specific journal.    

Due to this simplicity of this calculation, please be mindful that this quantitative measurement does not tell the whole story of a Journal's prestige and critical appraisals should not be based on this number alone.

Identifying the acceptance rates of journals can be very helpful when deciding where to publish your research and throughout the promotion and tenure process.  Each journal publication has their own way of calculating the acceptance rate, whether it uses the total number of manuscripts received or total number of manuscripts reviewed by editors.  No matter what the method may be, journal publications with low acceptance rates are considered to be more prestigious.

Methods of locating a journal's acceptance rate:

• Sometimes journals will include this data in the information for authors page of websites or print publications
• Professional societies or associations may share the acceptance rates of journals within their discipline
• Contact the editor of the journal for the specific acceptance rate