By: Lizbeth H. Finestack
I recently had a manuscript rejected. My next steps are to take the feedback I received in the reviews, revise the manuscript, and submit it to another journal. I began to try to think of other journal platforms for this particular study and felt like I hit a wall. I want to branch out, but which journal would be a good choice? Certainly, I need to select a journal with a good content link, but I also want to choose a respectable journal. This brought me to consider the impact factor metric. A journal’s impact factor for any given year (X) = A/B, where:
- A = the number of times that articles published in that journal in the two years prior to Year X were cited by articles in indexed journals during X.
- B = the total number of “citable items” published by that journal in the two years prior to Year X.
- *”Citable items” are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, or notes; not editorials or letters to the editor.
I went to the Journal Citation Reports of the ISI Web of Knowledge to look up some impact factors of some potential journals. I remember once upon a time going to the library and asking the librarian for a disk (to put into the computer) to retrieve impact factors. This time I could do it from the convenience of my laptop while watching Seth Meyers. That being said, it wasn’t quite the smooth ride I was expecting. I had trouble finding the mark button, marking items, and saving the marked items to my list. After a few tries, I did get it. After so much trouble, I decided to mark any journal that might have a remote chance of being applicable to my work. I searched several social science categories and came up with 118 journals. Many of these I have never heard of, but based on the journal titles, thought they might be worth considering.
Here is the list in alphabetical order:

If you are wondering about some of the other metrics listed, here is what they reflect:
- 5-year Impact Factor: Average impact factor across 5 years
- Immediacy Index: Average number of times an article is cited in the year it is published
- Cited Half-Life: Median age of articles cited by the journal in the JCR year
- Eigenfactor Score: Number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year (note: Eigenfactor Scores are not influenced by journal self-citation)
- Article Influence Score: Average influence of a journal’s articles over the first five years after publication – calculated by dividing a journal’s Eigenfactor Score by the number of articles in the journal
Here is the list sorted by impact factor:

So, it looks like I will be targeting the journal of Child Development…maybe someday.
Liza
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