Background

Metrics of journal's impact factor may suggest the journal's influence in a particular field, but they have been used inadvertently as a measure of the journal and individual publications' scientific quality.

Methods

We assessed how scientific journals in the field of psychiatry and mental health are ranked (top 20) according to the scores of distinct metrics (Eigenfactor score, Google Scholar Metrics, Journal Citation Reports, Scimago Journal & Country Rank, and Source Normalized Impact per Paper), described their main characteristics and perfomed a spearman's correlation analyses to investigate to which extent these metrics are associated. We also discussed the limitations of dealing with these metrics and the rankings they provide as a proxy of the journal's quality.

Results

Only 5 (12.5%) journals appear in all metrics (JAMA Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, Molecular Psychiatry, Schizophrenia Bulletin, and the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry), more than one-third of the journals show up in only one and less than half (42.5%) appear in three or more. Only JAMA Psychiatry is in one of the first five positions of all metrics. No journal ranked in the same position across the metrics. On the other hand, we found the correlations between all the metrics were statistically significant.

Limitations

The metrics included are not exhaustive.

Conclusions

Although each metric provides a particular ranking, they are highly correlated. Rankings also change according to distinct subject categories in which they are assessed. We suggest less emphasis should be given to Journal Metrics to infer journal's quality.

中文翻译：

---

精神病学期刊指标：排名告诉我们什么？

背景

期刊影响因子的指标可能表明期刊在特定领域的影响力，但它们已被无意中用作衡量期刊和个别出版物科学质量的指标。

方法

我们评估了精神病学和心理健康领域的科学期刊如何根据不同指标的得分（特征因子得分、谷歌学术指标、期刊引文报告、Scimago 期刊和国家排名以及每篇论文的来源标准化影响）进行排名（前 20 名） )，描述了它们的主要特征并进行了 spearman 的相关性分析，以调查这些指标的相关程度。我们还讨论了处理这些指标的局限性以及它们提供的作为期刊质量代理的排名。

结果

只有 5 种 (12.5%) 期刊出现在所有指标中（JAMA Psychiatry、American Journal of Psychiatry、Molecular Psychiatry、Schizophrenia Bulletin 和 Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry），超过三分之一的期刊只出现在一个和不到一半（42.5%）出现在三个或更多。只有 JAMA Psychiatry 处于所有指标的前五个位置之一。没有期刊在各项指标中排名相同。另一方面，我们发现所有指标之间的相关性具有统计学意义。

限制

包含的指标并不详尽。

结论

尽管每个指标都提供了特定的排名，但它们是高度相关的。排名也会根据评估它们的不同学科类别而变化。我们建议不那么重视期刊指标来推断期刊的质量。