Similar journals: how does it work?

What are similar journals?

When you look up a journal in the WUR Journal Browser, because you want to publish your article Open Access, you can find journals similar to that journal.

The co-occurrence of two journals in the references of an article (i.e. a co-citation of these two journals)  is a measure for similarity between these two journals. You can use these co-cited journals as suggestions of journals that may share topics and research fields.

When you found a journal title, you have to click on the title. When you scroll down you will see the 5 most similar (i.e. most co-cited) journals. Go to 'more...' to find 25 most similar journals. Only journals with 10 or more co-citations with the looked up journal are shown.

What do the citation scores mean?

The journals are presented in a table. The numbers in the table represent the number of co-citations of each journal, with the looked up journal. By default, co-cited journals are sorted based upon an analysis of the references in all Wageningen UR articles published from 2006 onwards. By selection of one of the columns ASG, AFSG, ESG, PSG or SSG it is possible to sort the co-cited journals based upon analyses of references in articles published from 2006 onwards by any of these sciences groups.

About the inventory of co-cited journals

The references used to count the number of co-citations for combinations of journals come from articles that have been published by Wageningen UR staff from 2006 onwards in journals covered by Web of Science. Using these references, Wageningen UR Library creates an inventory, based upon journals cited by Wageningen UR staff, to calculate similarities between journals. In this inventory only co-occurrences of journals are counted. These inventoried (cited) journals, however, do not necessarily have to be covered by Web of Science. The inventory of co-cited journals is updated annually.