The above factors are true, a journal is usually considered as international mainly based on their indexing, impact factor as well as circulation in more than one country.

But what about the source of data,

If a (especially social science), journal publishes papers based on one or two developed countries! can we say still it is an international?

hello friend...

Its a very obvious question arises in anyone's mind when he/she is going to submit a paper for publication. There are various numerical measures for the quality of a journal or to measure the reputation of a journal world wide. Some of them are impact factor, Eigen factor etc. The impact factor(I.F.) of any journal shows the popularity of the journal i.e. higher the I.F. higher the reputation.

Let us explore this with the help of an example that how this I.F is calculated.

Impact factor for a journal is calculated after the period of 3 years(generally)

for example for a journal X

the no.of articles published in 2006=5

the no.of articles published in 2007=6

total citations in 2008 for papers published in 2006 and 2007 =18

therefore the Impact Factor of Journal X in 2008

I.F.(2008)=Total citations in 2008 for papers published in 2006 and 2007/Total citable papers published in 2006 and 2007

=18/11=1.636

Now it is evident that I.F. depends on the citation of the published papers in that particular journal.

"A JOURNAL WITH HIGHER I.F. IMPLIES THAT THE AUTHORS HAVE DONE GOOD RESEARCH BUT IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT AUTHOR'S HAVING THEIR WORK PUBLISHED IN A LOW I.F. JOURNAL HAVE DONE RUBBISH ".

There are some misconceptions that if a researcher's paper has been published in a journal of low I.F then it would be rubbish. Because one should not forget the fact that I.F. is calculated for a journal not for authors.

There is another measure to know the reputation of an author, known as H-Index.

H- Index is calculated on the basis of citation for a paper regardless the name of journal. Higher the H-Index higher the value of work done by the researcher.

I hope now it would be somewhat clear to you that what are these measures and how they influence the image of a journal or an author.

regards.

According to my knowledge and experience till i have a journal is said to be international if it has proper abstracting and indexing, all journals are not impact factor, if we consider social sciences journal they have small impact factor like 1.2 0.56 so we can imagine how difficult to find the impact factor journals and get our papers published, before submitting your paper in the journal , we should look for the frequency of its volumes, the editorial board, proper abstracting and indexing and also should be peer reviewed. The journals related to natural sciences are almost impact factor and for it we should check the list of thomas reuters which have the complete list of international journals

Dear Solmaz,

you could have a look at this good paper:

Ellis, P. D., & Zhan, G. (2011). How international are the international business journals? International Business Review, 20(1), 100–112. doi:10.1016/j.ibusrev.2010.07.004

Hope it will help.

Br.

I agreed with Marion, the article provides a good insights in understanding how international are our academic journals. According to the article by Ellis and Zhan, a journal be considered as international journal if it has at least three things:

a. it has enough geographical scope in the published articles. It should cover issues or addressing problems in developed countries, emerging economies and developing countries from various continent.

b. contributing authors from various countries

c. pattern of research in the published articles. It should cover differences in cultures and approaches

Perhaps we can add more things for a journal to be considered as an international journal:

a. Readers of the journal are from various countries and cultures

b. The journal is circulated internationally (if printed) or can be accessed internationally (if online)

I think the above are among indicators when we consider a journal as an international journal. However, when we talk about the quality of a journal, then it has different indicators to ones of international journals.

Hope this may help.

Thanks.

If a journal concentrates only on one country (e.g. all articles have to be written on Indian consumer preferences or British accounting principles, articles on other countries are automatically rejected), if the whole editorial board consists of the residents of this country (or maybe in addition a couple of the country's nationals living abroad) and a majority of authors, too, are the country's residents or nationals, then it certainly is not an international journal: the impact factor does not determine anything here even if it is high. Some journals artificially increase the impact factor by e.g. forcing authors to cite at least 5 papers recently published there... thus, a high impact factor is not automatically a sign of a journal's high quality or high level of internationalization.

Tiia is correct here. IF is not a true indicator of internationalization.

Something further to consider is journals that encourage/publish national-specific studies - but the international context is highlighted and the potential for possible international comparative studies is identified and explored.