Dear Colleagues,

As you think ahead about where to submit your research for publication, you might want to check the recent impact factor for the journal. Increasingly universities and internal review boards consider such factors.  

(Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten the source (either Web of Science or Scopus, I think), that these came from. I started this before Covid hit but did not finish and distribute it to the college, until Dr. Villarreal’s recent query to me on the topic reminded me I need to get this out to you all. Thanks Mike!)

I’m also attaching two articles, FYI, on impact factors (one a bit dated, another that compares GoogleScholar to different databases that track citations). There are surely better sources of information, but you may find these useful in describing the strengths and limitations of different citation indices and impact factor rankings.

In the attached Excel file, which lists journals by recent impact factor (citation index), the index is the h5-index.

h5-index is the h-index for articles published in the last 5 complete years. It is the largest number h such that h articles published in 2014-2018 have at least h citations each.

h5-median for a publication is the median number of citations for the articles that make up its h5-index

One a separate but related note, I will be serving on the “Launch committee of Academic Analytics” this Fall.  I agreed to serve on this committee because it has been my observation that Colleges of Education are not well represented by Academic Analytics, which in many ways can be a very powerful tool for finding grants, getting connected and networking with scholars in your area. But it has major limitations. For example, it only draws citations for faculty on articles and grants from select databases/funders, and as a result many of our most productive faculty will not find their grants or articles listed. I share this with you to request that you look at your Academic Analytics profile in your department, and send me information you discover related to the omissions or errors you find. Even though we’ve (UTSA has) increased its investment (membership level) in Academic Analytics (AA), we are still highly constrained as to what types of corrections we can make to individual pages. But collectively we can advocate for AA to include additional funding and publication sources. So please share with me your feedback when you can. The Committee has its first meeting this Friday.

Michael

Michael J. Karcher, Ed.D., Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Research

Professor of Educational Psychology

College of Education and Human Development, University of Texas at San Antonio 
501 Cesar Chavez Blvd., Suite DB 4.337 (DT); MB 3.476 (Main Campus) 
San Antonio, TX 78207 
(210) 458-2032; 458-2650 (department)
michael.karcher@utsa.edu