LibGuides: Psychology Graduate Workshop: Literature Reviews: Top Psychology Journals

Measuring the Importance of Journals and Articles

The Impact Factor is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a given period of time. It is one way scholars measure the relative importance of a journal within its field.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
JCR allows you to search for Impact Factors for academic journals. e.g. Sort by Impact Factor, 5 Year Impact Factor, Eigenfactor Score, Article Influence (AI) Score

Find Key Scholars

Finding highly cited authors can lead you to highly cited journals and articles.

Google Scholar
Use Google Scholar to find authors whose research has been highly cited. Do a key word search on your topic and note that highly cited articles appear high in the list.
Scholar profiles available for some authors. (See Deborah Wiebe)
Social Sciences Citation Index
Sort search results by Times Cited -- highest to lowest, to find highly cited articles, then click on scholar's name to find distinct author summary.

Ulrichs Global Serials Directory

Not sure if an article is scholarly or popular? Ulrichs has detailed information on more than 300,000 publications. Enter journal/magazine title in the search box and find your publication. Then, look for Academic/Scholarly in the Content Type field.

Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory This link opens in a new window
Profiles nearly a quarter of a million consumer and trade magazines, academic and scholarly publications, monographic series, newsletters, newspapers, electronic publications, 'zines, and many other types of serial publications on all subjects.