A new approach to the SCI Journal Citation Reports, a system for evaluating scientific journals

The Science Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports (JCR), published by th e Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and designed to rank, evaluate , categorize and compare journals, is used in a wide scientific context as a tool for evaluating researchers and research work, through the use of jus t one of its indicators, the impact factor. With the aim of obtaining an ov erall and synthetic perspective of impact factor values, we studied the fre quency distributions of this indicator using the box-plot method. Using thi s method we divided the journals listed in the JCR into five groups (low, l ower central, upper central, high and extreme). These groups position the j ournal in relation to its competitors. Thus, the group designated as extrem e contains the journals with high impact factors which are deemed to be pre stigious by the scientific community. We used the JCR data from 1996 to det ermine these groups, firstly for all subject categories combined (all 4779 journals) and then for each of the 183 ISI subject categories. We then subs tituted the indicator value for each journal by the name of the group in wh ich it was classified. The journal group may differ from one subject catego ry to another. In this article, we present a guide for evaluating journals constructed as described above. It provides a comprehensive and synthetic v iew of two of the most used sections of the JCR, It makes it possible to ma ke more accurate and complete judgements on and through the journals, and a voids an oversimplified view of the complex reality of the world of journal s. It immediately reveals the scientific subject category where the journal is best positioned. Also, whereas it used to be difficult to make intra- a nd interdisciplinary comparisons, this is now possible without having to co nsult the different sections of the JCR. We construct this guide each year using indicators published in the JCR by the ISI.