Dear Muhammad Rayyan Fazal Just to make things clear when it comes to the meaning of the different terms:

-IF is the impact factor assigned by Clarivate. While all journals indexed in for example AHCI/ESCI/SSCI/SCIE index are called Web of Science journals, only SCIE/SSCI have an impact factor

-SJR is the SCImago database that make use of data provided by Scopus and thus belongs to another entity (Scopus) than the one that assigns impact factors (Clarivate)

-The same is true for Q1, Q2 etc. Both Clarivate and SCImago have their own ranking (and because of the difference in calculation and difference in their databases these rankings can differ)

Your observation that there are numerous journals mentioned in SJR (so Scopus indexed or used to be Scopus indexed…) and not having an IF is ‘simply’ because they are not indexed in Clarivate’s SSCI or SCIE index.

This can be due to several reasons (too new, the journal never attempted to be indexed, the journal lacks (financial) resources and above all Clarivate’s criteria are more strict than the criteria used by Scopus).

Your question “So can someone consider publishing in a journal that is present in the SJR list but not having IF” can be rephrased in “Is publishing in a Scopus indexed journal good enough for you (in terms of certain requirements for promotion, PhD degree etc.) or does the journal needs to have an impact factor as well”. This depends on your country, employer, etc.

Hopes this answers your question somewhat.

Best regards.

PS. I am curious to see examples of Q1 journals in Elsevier (I guess you mean as can be seen in SCImago) without an impact factor.

Dear Sir Rob Keller

Thank you very much for this detailed answer. It is very helpful indeed.

In fact, the journal I was talking about is a very old and impactful journal, "the Journal of King Saud University, Engineering Sciences". All other journals of "the journal of King Saud University" have high impact factor and of 'SCI-expanded' category. "the Journal of King Saud University - Sciences" for example or "Computer and Informatic Sciences".

Most of the universities, i.e., for Ph.D. degrees or academic promotion (or honorarium granted for publication) demand IF SCI publication. They are not concerned about SJR typically. So, is it wise to ignore SJR and just focus on Clarivate Analytics for paper publication? Because publishing in the above-mentioned journal is of no use in academics except you have disseminated your research work for the research groups.

Dear Muhammad Rayyan Fazal ,

Thanks for the example, intriguing matter. It looks to me that the journal “Journal of King Saud University, Engineering Sciences” is by itself an excellent journal but indeed somehow not indexed in WoS.

By the way the requirements of ‘your’ universities is somewhat mysterious, since for example the well-known “HEC Journal Recognition System” in your country states and I quote “A Journal is eligible to be considered for positioning in HJRS if and only if: (1) it is indexed by an indexing agency that is recognized by HEC from time to time; currently, the journals indexed by Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus are only recognized by HEC …”

https://hjrs.hec.gov.pk/index.php?r=site%2Fabout

Anyway, if your employer requires a WoS journal indexed in Clarivate’s SCIE with an assigned IF then you should limit yourselves to that. You can check the indexing of journal titles for Clarivate’s indexing here https://mjl.clarivate.com/home (see enclosed file for latest JCR report).

Best regards.

Dear Sir Rob Keller

Thank you so much for this detailed answer.

In fact, HEC keeps on changing the criteria, making it tougher day by day for the national journals. One thing that applies strictly and (hopefully) never going to change in the future is, they always accept journals listed in MJL (no criteria for SJR). They have their own categories W, X, Y or platinum, gold etc to rank different journals. But yes, some of the things are strange and debatable.

Just to clear some more doubts, I have a couple of questions:

First - what is your take on the current status of an author on publishing with a journal that is currently in MJL and SJR but after some years, it is blacklisted? The author has published a paper in a valid journal in the past? So as for now, will it be considered a valid and of same-impact publication as when the author published it?

Second - If someone has published with a journal with no impact factor and after some years it makes its way to MJL with good IF, so the author's current impact would have been the one when he published (No IF) or a current one (current IF)?

Dear Muhammad Rayyan Fazal ,

Interesting question that refers to a rather grey area. I am afraid it depends on your own organization and those in the committees who estimate these matters. An important factor in this matter is “the coverage”.

For example, Scopus includes (new) journals in for example 2022 and start the coverage in let’s say 2018 (so in 2018 the paper was not considered Scopus indexed but in 2022, and in the future, it is since the coverage will show from 2018 till present). I published a paper in “3 Biotech” (in 2015) and at the time it was not indexed in Scopus (and had no impact factor assigned by Clarivate):

Article The role and significance of potential lipid-binding regions...

When it comes to ‘the other way around situation’ I would say that when you published in a journal that at the time was indexed in SCI/SCIE it should be considered as a paper in a journal with an IF (sometimes a more than decent journal is discontinued by the publisher for whatever reason, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the journal which can be perfectly fine).

Unfortunately, there are predatory journals that managed to get indexed in Scopus and (sometimes) in SCIE. Once the people behind Scopus and/or Clarivate identify them as predatory (or at least as being no longer fulfilling their (quality) criteria) they can be discontinued/delisted. In those cases, it depends on which years they will maintain the coverage/indexing. If you publish in for example 2021 (and at the time it was Scopus indexed) and after discontinuation the coverage years are for example 2011-2019 then the paper will not be considered as Scopus indexed but a paper from let’s say 2018 will.

But again, I am afraid it will depend on your own organization how they will deal with these ‘grey’ cases.

Best regards.

Hello Muhammad Rayyan Fazal

A lot of academic organisations - including my own - seem to recognise IF more than anything. Thankfully, my own sub-area is run by people who know more about the journals within this area and they pay more attention to the journals (and reputation) and they recognise the intricacies of the journals and recognise how much your work is really worth. Hopefully other departments can take a similar approach and can see beyond generalised figures (like IF) which is what the overall university seems to do because they have less understanding of each sub-area (and it is unrealistic to expect that they understand all of these).

Joseph C Lee

Thank you so much for your answer, Sir. Well said, seems like they do not want to put extra effort towards it. They need to understand because I guess it's a big common problem that still prevails in society.