Writing 100 (Lanser) Discipline Awareness Assignment

Find Information about a Discipline, its Researchers & Trends

Identifying Current Issues and Research Trends

There are many different ways to identify the current issues and trends within a field, such as taking a course, talking to professors and other researchers, and keeping up with scholarly literature. Below are a few suggested pathways for identifying current issues and trends by using library resources:

Browse journal table of contents.
- Identify and browse prominent journals using Journal Citation Reports.
- Access UC Merced subscribed journals using the eJournal Finder tool.
Locate current issues and trends that are being reported on by journalists in the news.
Identify highly cited articles using Web of Science.

#1: Browse Prominent Journals using Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) This link opens in a new window
Journal Citation Reports evaluates citation data from approximately 12,000 journals and provides Journal Impact Factor, Eigenfactor Score and additional metrics. JCR is available in Science and Social Sciences editions.

JCR can show you the:

Most frequently cited journals in a field
Highest impact journals in a field
- see the Journal Impact Factor tab for more information
Issue table of contents and article links

Search by Category

Go to InCites Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and select Browse by Category .
Click Select Categories at the left. Select the category that best matches your discipline.
Once the center list is populated, click the number in the #journals column to view journal titles. Journal titles are sorted by Impact Factor.

Browse Table of Contents & Issues

Follow the above steps to locate journals within a category.
Click a title to access the journal profile.
Select the Go to Journal Table of Contents link.

The Impact Factor is a measure of the frequency in which the "average article" from a particular 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.

Use InCites Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to locate Journal Impact Factors and JIF quartile rankings.

Journal Quartile Rankings

Journal quartile rankings are calculated by the JIF of the journal and dividing it by the number journals in that category to find x. They are then distributed among as follows:

Q1: 0.0 < x ≤ 0.25

Q2: 0.25 < x ≤ 0.5

Q3: 0.5 < x ≤ 0.75

Q4: 0.75 <x

When searching in Web of Science, hover over the journal title in the results list or item record to view the journal's quartile ranking

Image from University of Denver Libraries

#2: Locate Current Issues & Research Trends in the News

NewsBank Hot Topics This link opens in a new window
Access to articles on current global issues in regards to business, economics, crime, politics, science, technology, health, social issues and more. Updated monthly, with previous months archived.
NewsBank: Special Reports This link opens in a new window
NewsBank's Special focus on topics of current interest. They include content from sources throughout the world to provide a global perspective, current and background information, statistics, maps, images, websites, and suggested search terms.

#3: Locate Highly Cited Articles using Web of Science

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Provides access to multiple science and social science databases. Web of Science allows researchers to sort results by number of times cited and offers filter options to select highly cited or "hot" papers.

These features can highlight significant research findings and trends in a research area.

Web of Science provides the total number of times a published work was cited by other works. The Times Cited view sorts results so that items with the highest numbers of citations are at the top of the results list.

In addition, Web of Science provides filters to limit results to Highly Cited and Hot Papers.

Highly Cited Papers are papers that perform in the top 1% based on the number of citations received when compared to other papers published in the same field in the same year.

Hot Papers are papers published in the last two years that are receiving citations quickly after publication. These papers have been cited enough times in the most recent bimonthly period to place them in the top 0.1% when compared to papers in the same field.