Compare Journals

Two journals can have similar names or similar Impact Factors and still be quite different in scope, audience and citation profile. The Compare Journals tool places key journal-level fields side by side so you can review the differences without opening several profile pages.

What to compare

Start with the journal title and identifiers to make sure you are looking at the correct records. Then compare the metric year, Journal Impact Factor, five-year JIF, Journal Citation Indicator, quartile, category rank, publisher and citation information where those fields are available.

Avoid choosing a journal on one metric alone

JIF and JCI answer different questions. The JIF reflects journal-level citation activity over a defined window, while JCI is field-normalized and is designed to make citation impact more comparable across research areas. Quartile and category rank add further context, but none of these measures tells you whether a journal is suitable for a specific manuscript.

Before making a submission decision, also consider the journal's aims and scope, peer-review model, indexing, publication fees, publication schedule and the type of work it normally publishes.