SJR
What is SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)?
SJR, the SCImago Journal Rank, is an indicator of a journal's influence computed from Scopus citation data by the SCImago research group. It counts the citations a journal's recent papers receive, but weights each one by the prestige of the journal it comes from — a citation from a highly ranked journal transfers more than one from a marginal journal — and divides by the journal's output, so the figure does not grow with size. Scimago quartiles are cut from it.
Definition
SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) is a size-independent measure of a journal's scientific influence. Where a plain citation count treats every citation alike, SJR weights each citation by the SJR of the journal it comes from, computed iteratively — the same family of methods as Google's PageRank — so that being cited by influential journals raises a journal's own rank more than being cited by peripheral ones. The result is expressed per paper, which is what makes a large journal and a small one comparable.
It is published by SCImago Lab, using Scopus data, for every journal Scopus indexes, and it is the indicator from which Scimago's Q1 to Q4 quartiles are cut within each subject category.
How it is computed
For a given year, SJR takes the citations received in that year by the papers the journal published in the previous three years, weights each citation by the citing journal's own SJR, and normalises by the number of papers the journal published in the same three-year window. Journal self-citations are capped, so a journal cannot lift its rank by citing itself. Scimago recomputes the indicator once a year and publishes it, with the quartile it implies, on scimagojr.com at no charge.
How to read the number
Most journals score below 1. Measured on our 27 September 2026 venue index, roughly three in four of the ~13,700 Scimago-ranked journals had an SJR under 1, a few thousand sat between 1 and 10, and only a few dozen exceeded 10. So a journal at 0.8 is not weak — it is around the middle of the ranked set — while the leading titles in most fields are a small number of points higher, and the handful above 10 are the most influential journals in the world.
As with every citation indicator, the scale differs by field: a life-sciences journal accumulates weighted citations faster than a mathematics or humanities journal of equal standing. Compare an SJR with journals in the same subject category, or use the Scimago quartile, which already makes that within-category comparison for you.
SJR vs impact factor vs cites per paper
Three figures that answer related but different questions:
- SJR — Scopus data, three-year window, each citation weighted by the citing journal's prestige, size-independent. Published openly by Scimago.
- Journal Impact Factor — Web of Science data, two-year window, every citation weighted equally. A licensed Clarivate metric we neither compute nor show.
- Cites per paper (2-year) — OpenAlex data, two-year window, every citation weighted equally. The open rate our journal profiles show in place of an impact factor.
- Because SJR weights citations and the other two do not, a journal cited often by low-ranked journals can have a middling SJR beside a healthy cites-per-paper rate, and a selective journal cited mostly by top journals can show the reverse.
Where we show it
Every journal profile at /journals shows the journal's SJR as Scimago published it, beside the best Scimago quartile, the OpenAlex two-year cites-per-paper rate and the h-index, with the date the venue index was built; the profiles are free to browse. We display Scimago's values and do not recompute them.
To rank candidate journals for your own manuscript, the Journal Finder costs 15 credits per run and lists each candidate's quartile and SJR beside its fit to your paper.