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Agricultural Systems Management: Top Journals,
 Impact Factors

Tips, techniques & links to help you find answers for your research papers & projects

Journal Citation Reports

Go to the Journal Citation Reports and find a ranked list of top journals in

Agricultural Engineering

Food Science & Technology

You may need to browse journals in other engineering categories and other disciplines to find all journals of interest.

 

Impact factors

What are impact factors?

The impact factor for journal X = the number of citations in a given year to all articles published in journal X for the previous two years, divided by the number of articles in that journal for those previous two years

What should concern you about cited reference searching and impact factors?

  • Citation rates vary widely from field to field and shouldn't be taken at face value, but considered relative to the field of research
  • Citation rate may be based on a few prolific authors citing each other, including self citations
  • Citation searching works better for journal articles than books
  • Coverage of your particular field in the citation database may be weak
  • Cross-disciplinary research may produce fewer citations
  • Distribution of the citations over time might be more indicative of their importance than an initial high citation count shortly after publication
  • Impact factors are a measure of the journal as a whole, not individual papers or researchers
  • Impact factors may play a too important role in hiring and tenure decisions without considering other measures
  • Some journals also cite articles in editorials, reviews, news, and other non-research articles to increase the number of cites
  • The research may too recent and not widely known, like emerging fields
  • The quality of the journal producing the citation
  • There is a growing tendency of some researchers to go after topics likely to get into high-impact journals, which jeopardizes creativity, and this can skew the course or even slow the pace of science
  • There is no guarantee that every paper which ought to be cited will be cited. An un-cited author may be ahead of his peers. Mendel and his genetics work went unappreciated for years