Gauging the quality of behavioral science journals by using bibliometric indicators

Abstract

This study aimed to gauge the quality of behavioral science journals on account of selected bibliometric indicators, namely Journal Impact Factor, Eigenfactor Score, CiteScore, SCImago Journal Rank; Source normalised impact per paper and H5-index. Also, to ascertain whether these indicators use as an alternative to each other for the assessment of the journals. 53 Journals from the behavioral science discipline have retrieved from Journals citation Report (JCR) of the Web of science. The JIF and ES metrics extracted from JCR, the metrics of CS, SJR and SNIP derived from Scopus and the metrics of H-Index managed from Google Scholar. The analysis has done by using IBM SPSS (21.0). Bivariate correlation coefficient has considered, a high Pearson's (r) found between JIF and SNIP (r = 0.928), while the lowest correlation recorded between JIF and H5 Value (r = 0.411). Spearman's (ρ) statistical correlation between JIF with CS shows maximum correlation, i.e. (ρ = 0.822), the minimum correlation recorded between JIF and H5-index ranks, i.e. (ρ= 0.664). The top five journals repeated in each indicator are "Trends in Cognitive Sciences", "Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews", "Behavioral and Brain Sciences", "Cortex" and "Appetite". The linear correlation observed in term of values and ranks of metrics of the indicators with the help of scatter plot hence concluded that the selected indicators could use as an alternative to each other.