Home / Venues / Rankings / What SJR quartiles (Q1 to Q4) mean

What SJR quartiles (Q1 to Q4) mean

The SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) scores journals from Scopus citations, giving more weight to a citation from a journal that is itself highly cited, much like ranking web pages by the links they receive.

Quartiles

Within each subject category, journals are ordered by SJR and split into four equal groups: Q1 is the top quarter, Q4 the bottom. A journal that belongs to several categories gets a quartile in each, so it can be Q1 in one and Q2 in another; evaluators usually take the best one or the one for your field.

Quartiles are relative: a Q1 journal in a small category may be less selective than a Q2 journal in a large one. Look a journal up on scimagojr.com; each journal page here links to its search.