Elsevier released the 2019 CiteScore values, its latest assessment of thousands of peer-reviewed research journals, book series, conference proceedings and trade publications covered in Scopus. This year more than 25,000 source titles covering 330 disciplines were ranked across eight indicators, which are all part of CiteScore metrics. These include: CiteScore, CiteScore Tracker, CiteScore Percentile, CiteScore Quartiles, CiteScore Rank, Citation Count, Document Count, and Percentage Cited.
Elsevier used a new methodology to calculate 2019 CiteScore values, with these four changes:
- Only peer-reviewed publication types (articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters and data papers) will be included in both the citation numerator and publication denominator, making the comparison between journals more robust. Previously, all publications were included in the calculations (non-peer reviewed article types like editorials, news items, letters, notes).
- Citations will now be counted cumulatively, from the year of publication until the end of the calculation window, which is up to four years. This means that all citations received by publications in this period are counted towards CiteScore values, allowing a more robust assessment. In the past, citations were counted for the previous year only.
- Publications in the four years up to and including the calculation year will now be included. This means that CiteScore can be calculated for journals with just a single year of publication, giving new journals – including many Open Access (OA) and China-focused journals – a first indication of their citation impact one year earlier.
- CiteScore values will be displayed to one decimal place in order to avoid an impression of precision, in line with industry best-practice. Previously, CiteScore values were displayed to two decimal places.