Below are trends, for behavior analysis journals, concerning the proportion of articles that go un-cited. These data may be thought of as reflecting the reliability of a journal’s scholarly impact. Traditional measures focus on average impact (based on citation counts for all of a journal’s articles combined). If many of a journal’s articles go un-cited, questions may be raised about such matters as the rigor of peer review and the importance of selected research areas served by the journal.
The 11 journals shown below are the only behavior analysis journals indexed in the SCImago Journal & Country Rank data base. Journal-ranking services do not attempt to track all of the tens of thousands of scientific journals that exist (with more appearing daily). Instead, they make judgements about which ones really matter. The SCImago site does not specify its criteria for choosing journals to track.
The present data are based on the citations a journal received over the previous three years. It’s worth noting that journals and research areas differ substantially in terms of how long it takes for citations to build up. For many behavior analysis journals, that’s a long time, with citation half-life (how long it takes to accrue half of an article’s eventual citation count) estimated at a decade or more. From this perspective, a 3-year window may miss a lot.
Notes:
- Axes are not consistent across journals, so you have to compare carefully.
- See the Postscript for a key to journal abbreviations.
- Green = number of cited articles and coral = number of un-cited articles. In other words, green good, coral bad.
Postscript: Key to Journal Abbreviations
| ABBREVIATION | JOURNAL TITLE |
|---|---|
| POBS | Perspectives on Behavior Science |
| JABA | Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis |
| JEAB | Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior |
| JCBS | Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science |
| JPBI | Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions |
| BI | Behavioral Interventions |
| BM | Behavior Modification |
| JOBE | Journal of Behavioral Education |
| ETC | Education and Treatment of Children |
| TPR | The Psychological Record |
| JOBM | Journal of Organizational Behavior Management |
| EJOBA | European Journal of Behavior Analysis |
| AC | Acta Comportamentalia: Revista Latina de Análisis del Comportamiento |
| B&P | Behavior & Philosophy |