SJR vs CiteScore: what each metric measures

SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) and CiteScore both measure how often a journal's papers are cited, and both are calculated from Scopus data. The difference is in the math. SJR gives more weight to citations from highly cited journals in a related field and uses a three-year window. CiteScore counts every citation equally and averages them over four years. Because the scales differ, compare a journal's SJR only with other SJR values, and its CiteScore only with other CiteScores, within the same field.

SJR and CiteScore side by side

How is SJR calculated?

SJR works like a search engine ranking for journals. Every journal starts with the same amount of “prestige”, which then flows along citations: when journal A cites journal B, part of A's prestige passes to B. The calculation repeats until the values settle. A citation from a journal that is itself well cited, and close in topic, moves more prestige than a citation from a rarely cited or unrelated journal.

Only citations made in the ranking year to documents published in the three previous years count. The journal's total prestige is then divided by its number of citable documents, so SJR is a per-paper value. SCImago caps how much prestige one citing journal can pass on, which limits the payoff from heavy self-citation or citation exchanges between journals.

How is CiteScore calculated?

CiteScore is a plain average. For a given year, it takes the citations received over four years (that year and the three before it) by documents the journal published in those same four years, and divides by the number of those documents. Only peer-reviewed document types count, in both the top and bottom of the fraction: articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters and data papers.

The four-year window was introduced in 2020. It suits fields where citations build slowly, and it makes the value steadier from year to year. Scopus also publishes a CiteScore Tracker that updates monthly for the year in progress, so you can see roughly where next year's value is heading.

Why do the two rank journals differently?

• Weighting. A journal cited mostly by top journals in its field ranks higher on SJR than its raw citation count suggests. A journal cited mainly by low-prestige or distant journals ranks lower.
• Window. Four years favors fields where papers keep collecting citations for years. Three years, counted in a single citing year, favors fields that cite quickly.
• Document types. CiteScore counts book chapters and data papers, so journals and series that publish them are treated differently.
• Categories.SCImago subject categories and Scopus subject areas are close but not identical, so a journal's quartile and its CiteScore percentile compare it against slightly different neighbors.

Neither metric removes the difference between fields. Mathematics and medicine cite at very different rates. If you must compare journals across fields, use SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper, from CWTS Leiden, also shown on Scopus Sources), or compare quartiles and percentiles rather than raw values.

Which one should you use?

• Your institution names one. Use that one, with the year and category it asks for.
• You want a simple, transparent number. CiteScore. You can rebuild it from the citation and document counts shown on the source page.
• You care about who cites the journal. SJR, because it rewards citations from influential journals.
• You need a quartile. SCImago assigns Q1 to Q4 by SJR in each subject category. Scopus shows a percentile, which many institutions convert to a quartile (75th percentile and above as Q1).
• You are comparing across fields. SNIP, or quartiles within each field.

Where does the Journal Metrics Score fit?

The Journal Metrics Score is a third, independent measure. It is the two-year mean citedness of a journal, computed from OpenAlex data rather than Scopus, and it covers 22,642 journals across 243 OpenAlex subfields. Like CiteScore, it counts every citation equally; unlike SJR, it does not weight by the citing journal. Quartiles rank journals within each subfield. See how the score is computed and what is a good Journal Metrics Score.

Because OpenAlex indexes more journals than Scopus, a journal's quartile on Journal Metrics can differ from its SCImago quartile. That is expected; the two sources rank against different sets of journals.

Common mistakes

• Putting an SJR value and a CiteScore value side by side as if they were the same scale.
• Comparing raw values between a clinical journal and a mathematics journal.
• Mixing years. Each source labels its release by a year, and the labels refer to different citation years.
• Checking a journal with a similar title. Always match the ISSN.
• Treating either metric as proof that a journal is indexed today. Indexing status is a separate check; see how to check if a journal is Scopus indexed.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

• How to find a journal's quartile for free
• Q1 vs Q2 journals: does the quartile matter?
• Free journal metrics websites compared
• What is a good h-index?