Q. Reliability of h-index to judge the quality of an academic journal

 

A journal is marketing its h-index to promote the quality of its research articles. How good a measure is the h-index? We in the college of business use the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) journal list at https://abdc.edu.au/research/abdc-journal-list/, as well as the Cabells list. Is the h-index comparable? For example, the Journal of Accounting and Finance promotes itself by its h-index as mentioned at http://www.na-businesspress.com/JAF/jafindexcitation.html.

Answer

I have done some research now, and it seems the h-index is a respected way of looking at a journal. However, it should be weighed with other factors, such as Impact Factor. The h-index began as a way to look at individual scholar impact, but it has now been expanded to journals. It seems from what I read that the h-index may actually provide a better measure of quality of publications than the impact factor. However, it should be one of multiple decisions when thinking about where to publish.

"A journal has an h-index of h if there is at least h papers published in that journal that have received at least h citations each." Impact Factor is the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal.

Here are some sources of information done by other libraries:

https://subjectguides.library.american.edu/c.php?g=175335&p=1154177

http://libguides.oulu.fi/c.php?g=124852&p=816814

 

Google Scholar Metrics and Scimago (https://www.scimagojr.com/) are the most extensive sources for h-index values of journals, but they may not include all journals. Here are instructions for Google Scholar Metrics from another library’s guide at https://guides.library.unisa.edu.au/c.php?g=169983&p=1119055

 

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Although I have not covered h-index on my guide, here is a link to it that gives more background on journal evaluation: http://library.uhd.edu/journalquality

 

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  • Last Updated Feb 27, 2019
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  • Answered By UHD Librarian

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