Training on Journal Citation Reports

Dr See recommending some strategies to look for good journals

The Library organised a training on “InCites: Journal Citation Reports” for the staff and students on 27 February 2018 at the Sungai Long Campus.

Dr See Diu Seng, the trainer, emphasised that the journal that a researcher intends to publish at is the most important factor that determines whether the paper will be cited. He suggested some viable publishing strategies to the audience. He said, “If you seek government accredited journals, the best way is to refer to the Malaysian Citation Index that is published by the Ministry of Higher Education. On the other hand, for researchers who aim at internationally recognised journals, the Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are good platforms to obtain high-quality journals.”

He strongly recommended the researchers and writers to use the JCR as a reliable platform to search information about a journal. Dr See emphasised, “Clarivate is the only database provider that monitors the journals. It is neutral in its metric calculation methods and is the only database provider which has a history of annual de-selections.”

He explained, “The JCR provides unbiased and objective journal measurements. It does not own any journals and only good journals are given journal impact factor scores. The platform also offers easy access for the users to check journal ranking and refer to the Immediacy Index and Cited Half-Life index metrics for citation-related information.”

“However, the JCR do not cover the Arts and Humanities journals as the citation analyses are less meaningful to the field of studies,” said Dr See. He advised the researchers and writers to avoid journal self-citations, citation anomalies and citation stacking as they will influence the journal impact factor and the quality of the journal.

Dr See is a Solution Consultant (Southeast Asia) of Clarivate Analytics. His training focuses on the methods to search for high impact journals through JCR.

The training saw more than a hundred researchers, staff and students