Spanish Government has changed recently the use of JCR as the principal impact factor to introduce the use of Scopus impact factor. I am very interested in know the diferences of the methodologies used in JCR and Scopus in order to evaluate articles research impact factor.
Hi Joaquin,
You need to be clear about your terminology. The Journal Citation Reports [JCR] and their Impact Factor [IF] is best understood as a product or brand of Thomson Reuters. you may have seen this but it is helpful to understand their marketing here [ http://thomsonreuters.com/journal-citation-reports/ ]. This applies to Individual journals.
Thomson Reuters also market the Web of Science a mega database in competition with SCOPUS published by Reed Elsevier. These products both generate article level citation data and both companies offer data and bibliometric analysis services to assess impact (not the Impact Factor above) to governments, research funders and universities to assess the impact of their research. In the UK bibliometric analysis of the type you may now have in Spain is a small part of the national REF or Research Assessment.
In other words the Impact Factor is a journal level measure and a product that belongs to Thomson Reuters. Impact metrics and bibliographic analysis is usually understood as an article level metric that can be calculated in any number of ways by those who have access to the data, i.e. Thomson Reuters and Reed Elsevier with Web of Science and SCOPUS, but also by other database publishers.
You need to understand the measure of metrics for governments and their agencies as a business. Nothing that sinister, but governments etc. they need to know where the best research is being done in order to assess it and presumably invest in it.
BW Matt
Many thanks Matt! You helped me a lot to understand the differences!!
Joaquín
Dear Joaquín Sarrión,
probably main difference between them is in database that they use for calculation IF, and not in methodology. one of these differences is that Scopus include more European Journals, so it is possible that IF of it be greater for European and so more journals exist, it can be anticipated that quality of it for comparing them be better. for comparing scope and other differences of these you can search in scholar and get many papers that compared them.
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