Determining the Value of Journals
Library collections budgets are facing many pressures. Not only are journal prices rising rapidly but the number of journals published continues
to increase at a rapid rate. Rampant serials inflation causes a concomitant reduction in the ability of academic libraries to purchase monographs.
Collection Managers use the latest data regarding journal use, citedness, and price to decide which journals should be added to the collection and
which ones may need to be canceled. Journal users can utilize the information on this page to determine the value of the journals they read and
publish articles in.
Journal Use
The Local Journal Utilization Report can be used to get an idea about which journals are being used by NCSU researchers. It provides data on the number of
times an NCSU author has published in or cited a specific journal. Please contact a Collection Manager if you would like to access this report.
Journal Impact
There are various measures of a journal's impact or relevance. Probably the best known measure is the Impact Factor which can be obtained from
Journal Citation Reports.
It is the number of cites in a given year (e.g., 2006) to articles published in the two preceding
years (e.g., 2005 and 2004) divided by the number of published articles in
that same time period (2005 and 2004). It should be used to compare relative citedness of various journals within a given subject area.
Some other measures of a journals' relevance can be found at Eigenfactor.org and the
Scimago Journal Rank Indicator.
The Eigenfactor itself takes into account the network of citations that exists among journal articles.
Eigenfactor.org also provides an Article Influence score which is more similar to the Impact Factor. For example, Cell has an Article Influence
of 16.842 and an Eigenfactor of 0.71902, both of which are in the 99th percentile.
Scimago Journal Rank Indicator uses the Scopus database and the Google PageRank algorithm to rank journals according
to the prestige one journal transfers to another through cited references.
The procedure for calculating the SJR is described here. Some of the journal indicators are
total documents published in a given year or three year period, the total cited references for one year, and citation average per document over a two year period.
It may be necessary to try all of the tools to see which one works best for your journal of interest.
Price Information and Economic Studies
Journal Price Effectiveness provides price per article and price per citation data
for internationally published journals. The relative cost index and composite price index are also provided to compare journals.
Periodicals Price Survey 2008 is published annually by Library Journal.
It highlights recent trends in journal publishing and provides data on periodical prices for different subject areas.
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory provides basic information about journals such as price, indexing and abstracting sources, and publisher information.
Trends in Scholarly Journal Prices 2000-2006 provides an
overview of journal pricing trends in biomedical and social sciences. Prices in relation to number of pages published and impact factor are reported.
Promise of Value-based Journal Prices and Negotiation:
A UC Report and View Forward presents metrics which can be used to calculate prices for journals based on their value to the institutional subscriber.
For information on managing your intellectual property and advice on where to publish please see
What Can You Do?
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