Journal Metrics in Psychiatry: What do the rankings tell us?

Background: Metrics of journal's impact factor may suggest the journal's influence in a particular field, but they have been used inadvertently as a measure of the journal and individual publications' scientific quality.

Methods: We assessed how scientific journals in the field of psychiatry and mental health are ranked (top 20) according to the scores of distinct metrics (Eigenfactor score, Google Scholar Metrics, Journal Citation Reports, Scimago Journal & Country Rank, and Source Normalized Impact per Paper), described their main characteristics and perfomed a spearman's correlation analyses to investigate to which extent these metrics are associated. We also discussed the limitations of dealing with these metrics and the rankings they provide as a proxy of the journal's quality.

Results: Only 5 (12.5%) journals appear in all metrics (JAMA Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, Molecular Psychiatry, Schizophrenia Bulletin, and the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry), more than one-third of the journals show up in only one and less than half (42.5%) appear in three or more. Only JAMA Psychiatry is in one of the first five positions of all metrics. No journal ranked in the same position across the metrics. On the other hand, we found the correlations between all the metrics were statistically significant.

Limitations: The metrics included are not exhaustive.

Conclusions: Although each metric provides a particular ranking, they are highly correlated. Rankings also change according to distinct subject categories in which they are assessed. We suggest less emphasis should be given to Journal Metrics to infer journal's quality.