As people generally know that higher impact factor occupies higher Q1 rank. However, I noticed that " environmental science and pollution research has 2.80 impact factor and it is Q1 ranked, while "environmental chemistry letters has 3.18 IF but still Q2. why and what is the meaning of Quartiles within subject categories? advance thanks.
Thanks due to your nice question.
##The Journal Impact Factor quartile is the quotient of a journal's rank in category (X) and the total number of journals in the category (Y), so that (X / Y) = Percentile Rank Z. ... When a research area is specified, the quartile for that particular journal and research area is displayed (Thomson Reuters).
## Based on the latest statistics (2017) both the journals you mentioned are belonged to the Q2 (Environmental Chemistry) category. More details can be found in the following link:
https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=23918&tip=sid&clean=0
https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=144946&tip=sid&clean=0
Journals with free content (open access) are more widespread than paid ones
It is important to recognize that quartile rank will be dependent upon the groupings used for the journal. For example, a journal might be Q2 in Environmental Chemistry, Q1 in Pollution, and Q3 in Chemistry. So it is all about the comparison group.
Each category have different cut values for each quartile. You can not compare between articles of different topic.
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