Journal Data Column Descriptions

With the help of the University of California libraries, the Office of Scholarly Communication maintains publishing, pricing, and use data about scholarly journals. To the best of our knowledge, all data is accurate and drawn from authoritative sources, but we do not warrant its accuracy or completeness.

In the table of journal data about price, impact, and use, the columns are defined as indicated below.

Title: We maintain data on a subset of the approximately 23,000 active peer-reviewed scholarly journals. A journal of interest may be missing from this list because it is not in the tracked subset, because journal titles change frequently, or because several publications may be bundled under one title.

Publisher: We list the current publisher for the subset of journals listed. The publisher of a journal greatly influences characteristics of the journal that are important to scholarly communication. For example, business models used by different publishers affect the affordability and economic sustainability of a journal. The publisher information may not be current because journals frequently move from one publisher to another due to acquisitions and mergers in the publishing industry.

List Price: The price of the journal as listed by the publisher or Ulrich’s Guide to Periodical Literature. This does not represent the cost to UC, which often has multiple campus print subscriptions and, in many cases, a Universitywide subscription to the electronic version of the journal. Electronic journal subscription prices depend upon a variety of factors, often including the bundle of titles for which access is negotiated, the terms of the negotiated deal and associated price caps, and the historic number of print subscriptions within UC.

ISI Impact Factor: ISI Journal Citation Reports are provided by Thomson ISI, Inc. The ISI reports include cited references for every article they index in more than 7,000 journals. Impact factor is a measure of the average frequency for which articles in a journal have been cited in a particular year or period. A journal must be indexed for three years before an impact factor is calculated.

UC Uses: The number of views and downloads of the full contents of articles in the online version of the journal. UC use is reported to us by the publisher and aggregated across all UC campuses. This information may not be available if the title is newly licensed by UC or is one component of a multi-title periodical.

Average Annual Price Increase: Calculated from list prices for 2002 through 2004. It may not be available if the journal is new or has recently moved to a different publisher.