These metrics consider the journal. What journal characteristics inform our judgment of its quality? How many times are articles in the journal cited, on average? How well does the journal perform against other journals in the discipline?

If you are including citation-based metrics in a rank and status portfolio, consider using the metrics for the year your article was published. This will provide a relevant snapshot of the journal, as these numbers fluctuate. 

The table below offers an overview and comparison of journal metrics. Prestige, influence, and rigor are concepts from one framework for evaluating journals. Normalized metrics allow comparison across disciplines, and weighted metrics allow certain citations to count more than others. Web of Science (from the company Clarivate Analytics) and Scopus (from the publisher Elsevier) are the two main citation databases used to calculate impact metrics; Journal Citation Reports is based on Web of Science data.

Influence metrics are problematic for several reasons, including:

• They can be manipulated. Editors or publishers can make changes to their publications (i.e., publish more review articles) that result in a higher metric.  
• A high influence metric for a publication doesn't mean that every article in that publication is of high caliber. 
• They are data dependent. Journal Citation Reports uses the selective Web of Science database, whereas Scopus and Scimago metrics are based on citations from the Scopus database. 
• Citation rates vary across disciplines. Oncology medicine, for example, has more citations that show up faster than a less popular or urgent field of study. 

Some journals and journal publishers list metrics information on their websites. Sage, for example, includes a Journal Indexing & Metrics page for all of their journals. The link is available at the top right of the journal website (see below), and the metrics data includes impact metrics, readership, and abstracting and indexing. 

Because there are a variety of misleading and fake metrics, be sure to confirm the source. 

Some open access journals and publishers attempt to take advantage of academics who need to publish. They profit from author fees without providing quality peer review and/or other editorial services typical of scholarly journals. These journals have been termed "predatory." 

Jeffery Beall, an academic librarian who has since retired, began a list of potential predatory journals and publishers in 2008. Though his list was controversial and taken down in 2017, others have continued his work.

For more on the history of Beall's list, try these resources: