Author: Ignacio Aguaded – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
When at the end of 2015 Thomson Reuters (now Clarivate Analytics) launched its new product ESCI, a database with “emerging” journals, (Emerging Sciences Citation Index) revolutionized the classic WoS portal (Web of Science), the most prestigious in the world in scientific journals of high international prestige, with the entrance of a large number of journals from all geographies, areas of knowledge and even languages. The little more than 10,000 journals classified in JCR (Journal Citation Reports), its star product and of greater world-wide reputation, was labeled in many forums like a product highly selective, elitist and biased towards the technological (areas of knowledge), the nordic (geography) and the Anglo-Saxon ( language). It competed with difficult with the almost 30,000 scientific journals that the competitive database, Scopus, already reached in its coverage, measured in the SJR (Scimago Journal Ranking), with greater thematic, geographical and linguistic diversity.
The “Emerging” journals have grown considerably in these two years, with more than 3,000 journals from 50 disciplines, according to Wikipedia (https://bit.ly/2HBvBCK) which are present in the public and official list of Clarivate (https://bit.ly/2FregdZ), conforming one more product within the Web of Science (WoS) with its works indexed for its consultation and its citations measured in its articles. These journals constitute, together with the regional databases such as Scielo (Latin America), the Chinese, Russian and other regional bases, the option of portal growth and the observatory for assessing the quality and impact of future consolidated journals, both for the company as well as for the researchers.
However, one of the most consistent criticisms that has been made txo this star product of WoS is the wide diversity of journals labeled as “Emerging”, some of them highly recognized by the regional and local scientific communities, but others are publications very incipient without proven editorial contrasted quality, recognition, prestige and impact in the community, enough to share this selective club. It was necessary to clarify, within this already extensive package, this “black box”, once it has been more than two years since its implementation, to offer editors, and especially authors, information on the quality of these journals, measured by its impact factor, applying the same calculation criteria that are used in the WoS portal for JCR journals.
Since all these journals are in the same portal, those that started indexing, already have the citation part for their measurement. For this reason, from “Comunicar”, an index has been generated in two fields of specialization: Education and Communication, in order to promote better knowledge of this base for authors and researchers with its measured impact factor and, therefore, its quartile and percentile, in addition to the regional classification by countries: https://bit.ly/2r1KOpL.
The objective of this work is to increase the knowledge of this “second division” of journals, as well as to contribute an external vision to the product, increasing the transparency of the tool and encouraging authors and editors to obtain a greater knowledge of the journals of the categories of Education and Communication of ESCI. The data has been calculated according to the citations that the articles receive in the Web of Science Core Collection. The loading and calculation of data has been carried out on April 2018, so that, although the data to obtain the indicators are already published, they are still subject to corrections and modifications by the Web of Science. “Comunicar” has no relationship with Clarivate Analytics and, therefore, this document has no official value.
In this same direction and policy of information and training to authors of scientific manuscripts, “Comunicar” counts since two years with this blog “School of Authors”, published in Spanish, English and Portuguese. It also offers on its official website a section with the Spanish journals JCR, Scopus (CiteScore), Scopus (SJR) and Top 100 Google Scholar (Index H), in the areas of Communication, Education and Cultural Studies (https://bit.ly/2FoPuuZ), in addition to the complete list of JCR journals (https://bit.ly/2vSO24k ), as well as a meta-rankings with the main indexers in Spanish journals.
