Below are trends, for behavior analysis journals, concerning the average number of citations per article. These 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.
This is based on the number of citations a journal received for articles published in the last 2, 3, and 4 years (three functions per journal). 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 2- to 4-year window misses a lot.
Note:
- Axes are not consistent across journals, so you have to compare carefully.
- Don’t get too excited about the upward trend for most of the journals. As the number of scientific journals has proliferated, so has the number of articles being published, and therefore the number of citations to other sources logged by those articles. In other words, ALL scholarship is being cited more than used to be the case, because there’s just more citing happening. It’s more informative to compare raw rates of contemporary citation across journals.
- See the Postscript for a key to journal abbreviations.
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 |