This guide is designed to provide new and experienced psychology librarians with basic information about services and resources commonly provided by psychology librarians in the academic setting.
Journals are central to scholarly communication in psychology. This page describes Psychology Committee journal projects as well as trends in psychology that relate to journals such as journal metrics and open access publishing.
Number of times the articles in a journal have been cited in a particular year or period. Divide the number of times articles were cited during the previous two years by the total number of citable articles in the journal during those two years.
Example: 20 = number of times articles published in 2011-2012 were cited in journals during 2013. 10 = number of articles published in 2011-2012. Impact factor = 20/10
Compiles articles' cited references and measures research influence and impact of the journals, shows the relationship between citing and cited journals. Produces the impact factor defined above.
Combined measure of a researcher's productivity (# of articles) and impact (# of times articles cited). Things to consider: length of a researcher's career, can be inflated by self citation, order of authorship not considered, and not used to compare researchers across different disciplines.
Measures the total influence of a journal on the scholarly literature or the total value provided by the articles published in the journal in a year. A journal is influential if it is cited often by other influential journals, it considers the network of citations that are linked to that journal's articles.
Scholar Metrics currently cover articles published between 2011 and 2015, both inclusive. The metrics are based on citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar in June 2016. This also includes citations from articles that are not themselves covered by Scholar Metrics.
Includes open access journals in all subject areas, including psychology. Has rigorous criteria for inclusion in directory - most journals are gold and peer reviewed.
