A new approach to the metric of journals’ scientific prestige: The SJR indicator

A size-independent indicator of journals’ scientific prestige, the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator, is proposed that ranks scholarly journals based on citation weighting schemes and eigenvector centrality. It is designed for use with complex and heterogeneous citation networks such as Scopus. Its computation method is described, and the results of its implementation on the Scopus 2007 dataset is compared with those of an ad hoc Journal Impact Factor, JIF(3y), both generally and within specific scientific areas. Both the SJR indicator and the JIF distributions were found to fit well to a logarithmic law. While the two metrics were strongly correlated, there were also major changes in rank. In addition, two general characteristics were observed. On the one hand, journals’ scientific influence or prestige as computed by the SJR indicator tended to be concentrated in fewer journals than the quantity of citation measured by JIF(3y). And on the other, the distance between the top-ranked journals and the rest tended to be greater in the SJR ranking than in that of the JIF(3y), while the separation between the middle and lower ranked journals tended to be smaller.