Relationship between Journal-Ranking Metrics for a Multidisciplinary Set of Journals

Ranking of scholarly journals is important to many parties. Studying the relationships among various ranking metrics is key to understanding the significance of one metric based on another. This research investigates the relationship among four major journal-ranking indicators: the impact factor (IF), the Eigenfactor score (ES), the h. -index (hI), and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR). The authors used 519 journals from a diverse range of subjects and executed a correlation analysis. The results show that a higher correlation exists between impact factor and SCImago Journal Rank (0.796). However, a very strong positive correlation between two metrics does not necessarily imply that journals are ranked according to the same pattern.