Indexing of research journals by Scimago: a decadal study (2005-2014)

Abstract

Citation indexes have assumed a significant role among the academic, research and scientific community across the world. The researchers are making their research results public through the recognized and well accomplished scientific journals. Given the fact, the present study is an attempt to work out the growth of research journals indexed by SCImago, which is purely based on SCOPUS data source citation index, one of the largest and well recognized citation indexing services in different subject fields across the world. Some of the key concepts evaluated include, the indexing growth of research journals SCOPUS citation index, distribution of indexed journals across different subject fields both at global and continental level.

The scope of the study is global in nature, but is limited to one major citation index only, viz. SCImago, which is based on SCOPUS data source. The study has been undertaken by analyzing the secondary data retrieved from the SCImago Journal and Country Ranking, which is totally based on the SCOPUS data source [1].The journals indexed by SCOPUS stand divided into 27 different major subject fields, covering over 300 sub-subject fields, published all across the globe. On average each year, 3.29% journals are added to the existing lot of journals indexed by SCOPUS. As on date, journal from 102 nation countries were found indexed by the SCOPUS database. A total of 16559 journals were indexed by the SCOUPS databases in 2005 and this number grew to 22878 research journals in 2014, registering a growth of 38.16% during the period of study at an average annual corresponding growth of 0.62%. Europe, North America and Asia emerged as the three leading continents in their standing order of having indexed the maximum number of journals with SCOPUS. While as, as the subject level, Medicine, Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities emerged the leading subject areas of having indexed the maximum number of journals with the database.

The study highlights the importance of popular indexing services and how researchers should be actually careful while choosing journals for publishing their research results, especially, when publishing phishing in different forms has somewhat become the order of the day.