The Journals of the Emerging Sources Citation Index are Making Their Way: The New Landscape of Education and Educational Research Journals in the Unified Journal Impact Factor Ranking
Abstract
The “publish or perish” culture —which pressures researchers to publish more, faster, and in higher-impact journals to secure their careers and funding— has been a breeding ground for questionable publishing practices, such as predatory journals and the so-called “nefarious numbers”, urging for a properly curated and reliable academic-scientific journal corpus, as well as for robust, transparent, and trustworthy bibliometric measures. To take its part, Clarivate, the owner of Web of Science, has implemented a series of editorial policy updates —including the extension of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) calculation to the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) journals, and the posterior JIF ranking unification— which signify a milestone in the journal evaluation scenario. In this paper, we analyze the new landscape of the Education and Educational Research journals included in the JIF ranking of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2023, making special focus on the impact of the integration of ESCI journals, of which the 11.22 % and 23.26 % have been positioned in the JIF Q1 and JIF Q2, respectively. In this way, we aim to help researchers, publishers, and funders in the field to evaluate —in terms of the JIF ranking— the quality journals included in the JCR 2023, besides the collection in which they are indexed, providing them with valuable insights for informed decision-making in terms of impactful research dissemination media, trustworthy research sources, editorial strategies, and research evaluation.
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