publications - How are journals evaluated?

How are journals evaluated?

A researcher is evaluated on the basis of his/her publications. If a researcher has good publications in his/her PhD he/she is offered a Post-Doc position and eventually a faculty position.

My question is:

How is a journal judged?How does a faculty search committee evaluate a person's publications based on the journals where one has published?Is it done on the basis of impact factors of journals?

Answer

I feel it may differ from country to country, or even from institution to institution. It may also differ across disciplines. Where I am working, there is what is called journal reputability assessment guideline, which outlines several criteria in assessing journals in which a faculty has published articles. These include the following.

1. Journal impact factor (JIF) - journals with higher JIF are given higher weights.


2. The current volume of the journal - as in JIF, journals with higher volumes currently are assigned higher weights.


3. Indexing - journals indexed in known indexing services are considered more trustworthy and hence are given more weight than journals not indexed in known indexing services.


4. Publisher - though assessment of this criterion is more subjective, journals considered as being published by popular publishers get more weight while those considered as being published by less known publishers are given lesser weights.


5. DOI number - journals assigning digital object identifier (DOI) to their articles are given more weights.


6. ISSN number - if the journal has an ISSN number (though it is less likely that a journal will not have one), it is rated more positively (i.e., it gets higher weight).


7. The composition of the editorial team and editorial policy - this is also subjective; journals considered to have a high profile editorial team/board and standard editorial policy are assigned higher weights than those otherwise.


8. Regularity and continuity of publications - Journals that publish regularly and without interruption between volumes or issues are assessed more positively (i.e., get higher weights) than those with irregularity and discontinuity in publishing.

So, the bottom line is, the criteria may differ and the way the evaluation is accomplished could also be different, but universities have such set of criteria for assessing journals.