An evaluation of forestry journals using bibliometric indices

Abstract

The increasing number of scientific journals, especially over the last 20 years, created the need for methodologies based on simple metrics, to accurately capture the quality of those journals and their impact on the scientific community. Especially in the case of journals from the field of forestry, relatively little work has been conducted on providing valid journal classifications. In this paper we attempt to assess the impact of journals from this field in terms of bibliometric data. In addition to the already proposed metrics (complementary to the journal h-index), we also apply a new measure to rank journals, that provides a more balanced evaluation of the journal performance, by adjusting for various biases affecting the h-index. We examined the relationships between various bibliometric indicators proposed for assessing the journal impact and wo found high correlations between most indices, with only few exceptions. According to citation analysis, Canadian Journal of Forest Research, Journal of Vegetation Science, Forest Science, Tree Physiology, International Journal of Wildland Fire, Holzforschung, Trees-Structure and Function, Silva Fennica, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology and Wood and Fiber Science are the top forestry journals. These publish articles related to all the domains of forestry science. More specialized journals are also included, dealing with specific issues of scientific interest and also of major importance to the scientific community.