Hi Vicki



We get the question about four star journals a lot: this seems to be a popular short-hand for indicating "published in a journal where we'd expect papers tend to do well in the REF". My usual response is that only an article is 4*, and we won't even know which articles fall into this category until 2021, although I will acknowledge that a journal offering quality peer review may actually add value to a paper. To be honest, a very unofficial goal for me in trying to raise institutional literacy in publication and bibliometrics is to eliminate the phrase!



It is worth mentioning that there is one journal guide, CABS https://charteredabs.org/academic-journal-guide-2015/, which uses 4* as a journal ranking: it's worth double-checking for crossed wires when the phrase pops up!



In terms of conferences, I don't have much to offer, other than to say that I've found Google Scholar has a contribution to make to ranking conference proceedings over Scopus. It's my experience that Scopus finds it difficult to match citations to conference proceedings, which is understandable as conference proceedings are often less structured and more variable than journals. The algorithms in Google Scholar rely less on the structured nature of publication data, so seems more resilient to this variability.



Best wishes,

Katie



--

Katie Fraser PhD, MCLIP

Senior Research Librarian



Libraries, Research and Learning Resources (LRLR)

University of Nottingham

A07, George Green Library

Nottingham, NG7 2RD



+44 (0) 115 95 13247 | nottingham.ac.uk/library | orcid.org/0000-0003-0844-8734



-----Original Message-----

From: A bibliometrics discussion list for the Library and Research Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Vicki McGarvey

Sent: 06 December 2017 15:00

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Conference metrics & what is a four star journal



Good afternoon everyone, 



We are now being asked by colleagues in the University to run training sessions for staff and research students on bibliometrics, which is great news. 



The following questions have popped up



What is a four star journal, and how can I find fours star journals for my subject area - how do people respond to this? My response is that bibliometrics and altmetrics do not star ratings as a way of ranking journals and it is possibly a legacy from Research Excellence Framework which uses stars to rank papers.

 

Is there a metric for ranking conferences? These are the only sites I can find for ranking conference but other than conference proceedings in Scopus which are ranked we could not find anything else. Academics are wanting this advice when research students ask for conference sponsorship  

o	http://www.core.edu.au/conference-portal

o	http://www.conferenceranks.com/#sources 

o	https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/93026/what-are-some-metrics-to-rank-conferences



I welcome any feedback on how other colleagues respond to this.



Vicki McGarvey [log in to unmask] Learning and Information Services Manager - Collection Management, Research and Digital Resources Staffordshire University 





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