Author: Ignacio Aguaded – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion

Today, talking about scientific journals in Universities is a theme, given the importance that for any researcher has to become known and edit in any periodic publication of quality their research results if he or she wants to have visibility of their jobs and academic reward of their studies.

It is especially remarkable in a university and academic environment, to confirm the lack of knowledge that exists among the staff of university professors (and even with fake assumptions) about the quality journals, the importance of their editorial management, their visibility indexes and the impact factor in the scientific community.

One of these confusing points, and in many occasions, misunderstood, are the indexations and their classification in quartiles, a simple way of organizing (hierarchically) the journals in the main indexes in the world based on the quartile in which they allocate.

The Q1 journals are the ones that occupy the best positions and therefore, are the most prestigious and famous in their classifications because they have gotten for the valuation of the year the best and most numerous cites of their journals.

In the Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics) the most renowned index at the level of the world is counted this year with 123 Spanish journals, from which only 5 have the honor of being (JCR-Q1: 1) 1) Emergencias (Health), 2) European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context (Psychology), 3) COMUNICAR (Communication/ Education), 4) Revista Matemática Complutense; 5) European Journal for Philosophy of Science. They are, without doubt, the top journals of the Spanish Science. Among them it is “Comunicar”, the unique journal in Social Sciences that keeps its status in this selected group.

JCR-03

JCR-01

JCR-02

Scopus, the second database of high level and international prestige, counts with two indicators: the CiteScore and the SJR (Scimago Journal Ranking). In this portal nowadays we count with 514 Spanish journals from the 28,606 that are found in the base in 2016 (only a 1,79% are Spanish, a very reduced percentage of the potential of the science in our country). From this, only a 5,25% are SJR-Q1, in total 27, it means that only 0,094% of the journals Scopus SJR-Q1 are Spanish, a really low percentage and significant of the editorial scientific staff from our country and of the support from the administrations and from the research community to the same.

SJR-02

SJR-01

In SJR-Q1 “Comunicar” reaches the 7th position from the 27 existent and is the unique that keeps the Q1 in three differenced areas: Communication Q1, Education Q1 and Cultural Studies Q1.

In short, our country will continue struggling to position its science in the visible journals of high impact in the world. The Administration, the Universities and the community of Spanish researchers have a lot to say…and even to do.

Recent posts