Realizing a collaboration begun with Clarivate Analytics in 2017, the organization Red Iberoamericana de Innovación y Conocimiento Científico (REDIB) has launched its Ibero-American Journal Rankings. Based on Clarivate data, the listings feature regional journals published in Spanish, Portuguese, and other languages relevant to specific academic communities in the Ibero-American region. Incorporating a novel methodology that gauges the impact and comparative performance of research papers published within a variety of specialty journals, the ranking highlights journals in emerging fields, especially those in the arts and humanities.
“Incorporating a novel methodology that gauges the impact and comparative performance of research papers published within a variety of specialty journals, the ranking highlights journals in emerging fields, especially those in the arts and humanities.”
REDIB is a platform for presenting aggregated scientific and academic content produced in Ibero-American countries or relating to Ibero-American issues. The platform provides a single portal by which users – in academia, scientific policy-making, or the general public – can access content of confirmed quality. REDIB is a joint venture of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) and Unversia. CSIC is the Spanish Natural Research Council, a government agency and the nation’s largest state institution dedicated to research in Spain. Universia is Ibero-America’s largest network of universities, comprising more than 1,300 universities in 20 countries.
A key aim of the REDIB/Clarivate collaboration was to enrich the REDIB journal records indexed within the Web of Science Core Collection. The Emerging Sources Citation Index, a component of the Web of Science built on the inclusion of high-quality, peer-reviewed journals of regional importance, made possible the creation of the Ibero-American Journal Ranking.
Methodology
Employing a range of metrics from Clarivate Analytics, the methodology for the ranking allowed journals from diverse subject fields to be equitably compared over a recent six-year period. For example, a “normalized citation impact” measure assessed the influence of papers while controlling for subject category, document type, and year of publication. Another measure factored in the percentage of a journal’s papers that have been cited at least once. A further data point evaluated all citations received within a given subject category and then gauged the percentage of those cites garnered by each journal.
A journal’s published papers came under further scrutiny via a metric that determines what percentage of those papers rank among the top 10 percent most cited within the given category. Finally, the analysis determined a journal’s mean percentile in terms of citation impact. Again, these measures are primarily independent of a journal’s subject category and size, so that journals in different categories that publish varying numbers of papers could be compared fairly.
With the various component scores falling on a scale of 0 to 100, each journal’s overall mark was determined by taking the average across all scores. This average served as the basis for the ultimate ranking. [Note: some of the newer journals lacked the full six years of data considered for the ranking. Nevertheless, those journals still received a score but were flagged in the listing to indicate that they did not exist long enough to amass data for the relevant years.]
The final ranking of journals displays wide diversity in subject matter. The top three journals, for example, represent, respectively:
- communication and education;
- dialectology and popular traditions; and
- the science of paper and wood.
Top 10 Ibero-American journals, ranked by REDIB
| Journal | Rank |
| Comunicar | 1 |
| Revista de Dialectologia y Tradiciones Populares | 2 |
| Maderas-Ciencia y Tecnologia | 3 |
| Journal of Iberian Geology | 4 |
| Geologica Acta | 5 |
| Psicothema | 6 |
| Espana Medieval | 7 |
| Revista Matematica Complutense | 8 |
| Scientia Marina | 9 |
| Latin American Journal of Content & Language Integrated (LACLIL) | 10 |
Table 1. Top 10 Ibero-American journals, ranked by REDIB. Data source: Web of Science from Clarivate Analytics.
The Ibero-American Journal Ranking demonstrates the breadth and value of emerging research stemming from the Ibero-American region.
Click here to see the ranking, or learn more about Web of Science.
