Relationship between Journal Ranking Metrics in a Diversified Collection

Purpose Ranking of scholarly journals is important for many parties owing to numerous reasons. Studying the relationships among various ranking metrics is the key to understand the performance of one metric based on another. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate the relationship among four major journal ranking methods, namely: Impact Factor (IF), Eigenfactor Score (ES), h-index (hI), and SCImagoJournal Rank (SJR). Design/methodology/approach The paper investigates 519 journals from a diverse range of subjects to execute a comprehensive correlation analysis. Findings The results show that there exists a higher correlation between the IF and SJR (0.796). However, a very strong positive correlation among two metrics does not necessarily imply that the journals are ranked in the similar pattern. Originality/value The first study which discusses the journal ranking relationships in a diversified collection and the inability of comparing correlations between metric values and the correlations between corresponding journal ranks.