Percentiles and Quartiles in Scopus: All the Truth and Facts!
Journals in Scopus are divided into four quartiles, and now you will learn how to determine the current quartile and percentile of a journal. In Kazakhstan, it is very important for a scientist to publish in journals with percentiles of at least 35%, which corresponds to the 3rd quartile.
Definition of Quartile and Percentile
A journal's quartile in Scopus depends on its percentile. Let's look at how these indicators are distributed:
Q1 (First quartile)
Percentile: 75-100% This is the highest indicator, which includes the most authoritative foreign journals.
Q2 (Second quartile)
Percentile: 50-74% These journals are also elite and authoritative, but are inferior in importance to Q1.
Q3 (Third quartile)
Percentile: 25-49% The golden mean, which includes well-known journals.
Q4 (Fourth quartile)
Percentile: 1-24% The lowest quartile, but still giving a scientist a chance to make a name for themselves in the authoritative scientific publication Scopus.
When is percentile not calculated?
Percentile in Scopus is not calculated in the following cases:
- When a journal was accepted into Scopus less than 3 years ago, as there is not enough data for calculation.
- When a journal was excluded from Scopus.
In all other cases, the percentile can be calculated without any problems.
How are percentiles calculated?
A journal's Scopus percentile is determined by its CiteScore. This ranking takes into account the number of citations of documents per year (we are talking about documents published in the previous 4 years). This indicator is divided by the number of documents indexed in Scopus and published in the same period.
For example: A journal published 100 articles in 4 years and they were cited 200 times. Its CiteScore would be 2.0.
It is important to note that if a journal belongs to several fields in Scopus, it has its own percentile in each of these fields. The final percentile of the journal is chosen as the highest of all its percentiles in different fields.
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Dependence of percentile on the field of knowledge
In different fields of knowledge, the percentile can vary significantly. For example, in economics, where many journals are indexed in Scopus, the competition is high, and even with a CiteScore of 1, the percentile can be only 19, which corresponds to the 4th quartile. While in philosophy, the same CiteScore 1 can correspond to the 78th percentile and the first quartile.
Why is understanding percentiles and quartiles important?
It is important for professionals with a PhD or academic background to understand the information in this article to use Scopus effectively. Academics often assume that journals with a 1st or 2nd quartile publish high-quality articles. However, percentile and quartile depend on two factors: the number of articles and the number of citations. A journal may publish a small number of low-quality articles, but if they are highly cited, the journal will have a high quartile and percentile.
Where to check the real quartile of a journal in Scopus
Dear scientists, Many of you very often make the mistake of checking the current quartile of the journal using the Scimago service — https://www.scimagojr.com/
Scimago — shows information about the journal for the previous year. Let's take for example a journal that according to Scimagojr was in the 3rd quartile in 2023
And the information on the Scopus website shows that he is in the 60th percentile, which is equal to the 2nd quartile, in 2024.
Therefore, always refer to the current journal percentile, and not to the information from the Scimagojr website.
Conclusion
Understanding the mechanisms of determining percentiles and quartiles allows you to effectively use the Scopus database. The company "Academy of Articles" offers consultations and assistance in writing and publishing scientific articles in Scopus.
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