Ranking forestry journals using the h-index

TL;DR

This paper evaluates various metrics for ranking forestry journals and finds that Google Scholar's h-index provides an efficient, objective, and highly correlated alternative to impact factors, enabling comprehensive journal ranking.

Contribution

It introduces a ranking of 180 forestry journals based on Google Scholar's h-index, demonstrating its effectiveness compared to traditional impact factors.

Findings

Google Scholar's h-index correlates highly with impact factors (r=0.92).

Citations from Google Scholar offer an efficient way to rank journals objectively.

A comprehensive ranking of 180 forestry journals is presented.

Abstract

An expert ranking of forestry journals was compared with journal impact factors and h-indices computed from the ISI Web of Science and internet-based data. Citations reported by Google Scholar appear to offer the most efficient way to rank all journals objectively, in a manner consistent with other indicators. This h-index exhibited a high correlation with the journal impact factor (r=0.92), but is not confined to journals selected by any particular commercial provider. A ranking of 180 forestry journals is presented, on the basis of this index.