Scopus It is the only abstract and bibliographic database that includes scholarly literature. Scopus created by the publishing house “Elsevier» (“Elzevir”), which provides access through a special institutional subscription.
The interest in this database is evident and not coincidental. For specialists with advanced degrees, it is important to publish their research in the relevant journals included in this database. But simply being listed in Scopus – is not yet a sufficient condition for a scientific journal to be considered relevant for publication. The journal must have an appropriate ranking in CiteScore and the percentile. Otherwise, the article will not be considered. Therefore, it is very important to understand these metrics so that you can select the most appropriate journal for publishing your research papers.
Percentiles and quartiles
First, let's look at the terminology in its basic sense, and then we'll move on specifically to the database Scopus and examples of analyses of the necessary indicators.
The term “percentile” refers to the measure at which a percentage of the total values is equal to or less than that measure. For example, 90 percent of the data values are below the 90th percentile. Or, 10 percent of the data points are below the 10th percentile. As for quartiles, these are the values that divide the data table into four parts. This is a general definition of these concepts. Now let’s look at how they apply to the database Scopus.
- 25% – Q1, 1st quartile, 99-75 percentiles;
- 25% – Q2, II quartile, 74-50 percentiles;
- 25% – Q3, quartile III, 49-25 percentiles;
- 25% – Q4, IV quartile, 24-1 percentiles.
If you take this diagram into account, it will be easier to understand the structure of the database Scopus It's not that difficult. Next, we'll look at some examples to see how this works in practice in more detail. But first, let's consider one more important issue.
In which case the journal does not calculate the percentile
Percentile in Scopus It is not calculated in the following situations:
- when the scientific journal was accepted by Scopus more than 3 years ago;
- when a scientific journal was excluded from Scopus.
In this case, everything is quite clear, since there is not enough data for the calculation;
In all other situations, such an indicator can be calculated without any problems.
How to determine the quartile of a scientific journal by percentile
Although some of the definitions may seem complicated at first glance, in practice they are fairly easy to understand. Each subject category to which a particular scientific journal belongs has its own ranking. According to the AJSC classification, all journals within a category are ranked in descending order based on the indicator CiteScore. Let's look at a specific example. Suppose we are dealing with the 86th percentile. This means that the scientific journal ranks among the top 14% (86 must be subtracted from 100) publications that are considered the most significant CiteScore in a specific field.
And, of course, this answer would be incomplete without considering what the concept is based on CiteScore in Scopus. To put it simply, CiteScore – is the ranking that a scientific journal has in the database Scopus. This metric is calculated based on the number of citations received by documents over the course of a year (specifically, documents published within the previous three years). This metric is then divided by the number of documents that were indexed in Scopus and published during the same period.
By the way, there is another important aspect to consider when a scientific journal covers several fields at once in Scopus. In such cases, you can see that each of these areas has its own percentile for the journal. Accordingly, the highest of these is selected. This will be the final percentile of the scientific journal in Scopus.
To sum up…
For all professionals who hold a scientific or academic degree, understanding the information described in this article is extremely important for effective use of the database Scopus. It is important for every such expert in their field to have two scholarly publications in the form of articles published in an internationally recognized peer-reviewed journal that is included in the database Scopus. But that's not the only requirement. Ranking percentile CiteScore must be at least 35 in one of the scientific fields.
As for military personnel, specialists from higher military institutions, research organizations, or specialized educational institutions, the requirement is slightly different. They must have 3 research articles, the percentile of which is in Scopus is at least 50.
