Journal and Article Metrics Guide
Download our PDF guide to understand more about journal and article metrics.
Understand journal and article metrics before you submit
When deciding where to submit your manuscript, consider a broad range of journal and article metrics to decide which journal will help you achieve your goals of getting the best reach, recognition and impact for your research.
Journal Metrics
Journal metrics are useful for evaluating the collective impact of the journal’s total output, not the impact of an author’s individual contribution. Most of the indices that supply journal-level metrics, are selective and employ a rigorous screening process that includes an assessment of the journal’s potential citation impact alongside quality control measures, such as the journal’s publication ethics standards, research integrity practices, peer review model, and other criteria.
Article Metrics
Article-level metrics provide valuable insights specific to the impact of your individual work including media attention, reproducibility and re-use. These metrics help you measure more than the citation value of your research. Article-level metrics are designed to highlight the impact and educational value of research outputs within the scientific community but also to the wider community. Learn more about article-level metrics here.
As a DORA signatory, we are committed to making a broader range of metrics publicly available to support responsible research assessment practices and help authors to gain deeper insight into the impact of their work.
Metrics Most Commonly Displayed on Wiley Journals*
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Metric Name |
Metric Source |
Metric Description |
|---|---|---|
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Journal Impact Factor |
The Journal Impact Factor is defined as all citations to the journal in the current JCR year to items published in the previous two years, divided by the total number of scholarly items (these comprise articles, reviews, and proceedings papers) published in the journal in the previous two years. Learn more about Journal Impact Factor here. |
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5-Year Journal Impact Factor |
The 5-year journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the five previous years. Learn more about 5-Year Journal Impact Factor here. |
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Journal Citation Indicator |
Designed to complement the Journal Impact Factor, the Journal Citation Indicator is field-normalized so it can be easily interpreted and compared across different disciplines. Learn more about Journal Citation Indicator here. |
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Altmetric Badge |
Digital Science |
Altmetrics go beyond more traditional citation metrics to measure social visibility around scientific articles. These metrics are based on a broad spectrum of indicators, such as tweets, blog mentions, news media, social bookmarking, article views, and downloads. |
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CiteScore |
The CiteScore is calculated by dividing the number of citations to documents published in a 4-year period by the number of documents in same 4-year period. Learn more about CiteScore here. |
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SNIP |
The Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) measures average citations in Year X to papers published in the previous 3 years. Citations are weighted by the citation potential of the journal’s subject category, thereby making the metric more comparable across different disciplines. |
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Scite Citation Badge |
scite |
Smart Citations allow users to see how a publication has been cited by providing the context of the citation and a classification describing whether it provides supporting or contrasting evidence for the cited claim. Learn more about scite Smart Citations here. |
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Submission to First Decision |
Journal data |
The time in days between timestamps, or dates if no timestamp is available, between the received date (the latest submission date recorded against the first version of the paper, i.e. where multiple revisions have been submitted, the original paper) and the date that an editor makes any type of decision, including desk rejections, rejection without receiving external peer review and withdrawals, on that first submitted version of a paper. This is calculated and displayed as a median. |
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Submission to Acceptance |
Journal data |
The time in days between timestamps, or dates if no timestamp is available, between the received date (the latest submission date recorded against the paper) and the date that an editor makes a final decision of 'accept' on the latest submitted version of a paper (i.e. where multiple revisions have been submitted, the latest paper). This is calculated and displayed as a median. |
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Acceptance Rates |
Journal data |
The percentage of papers accepted during a given period as a proportion of all papers arriving at a final decision in that period. This is calculated according to the final decision date rather than the year in which the paper was submitted. Note: the Acceptance Rate metric includes rejections with no review. Acceptance Rates can be impacted by the journal’s scope, peer review model (sound science vs. selective), commissioning strategy (invited reviews, special issues), eligible document types, study design requirements, and many other factors. Please visit the individual journal homepage for more information and context. In many cases, rejected articles are eligible for transfer to a journal that is in scope. |
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Full Text Views |
Journal data |
The number of unique usage events taking place in the given year on Wiley Online Library, including all forms of full text access (HTML/PDF/Full Text Author Manuscript). Events relating to abstract views / access denied notifications are not included. All usage linked to crawlers is removed. |
*Not every journal will have these metrics available. Clarivate and Scopus metrics require a journal to be indexed which is a selective process. If a journal has not applied for indexing, or has not been accepted for indexing, then it may not display all the available metrics.
Indices contain a variety of metrics used to measure journal performance and impact. Visit the Index website to learn more about the available metrics.
For more information about Wiley’s Open Research initiatives and opportunities to showcase and gain recognition for your individual contributions, visit the Open Research page.