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I've searched the forums but can't find anything specific to this question so I hope someone can help. Recently I've been told that I need to better strategise my publishing as I'm not publishing in the right journals (fair enough) because I should be publishing in Q1 journals. However, when I checked all of my journal articles against the SJR website, 9/20 of my published articles are in fact, in Q1 journals, 6/20 in Q2, and 2/20 in Q3 (with 3 that aren't ranked as they were undergraduate/postgraduate pieces). For those 9/20 impact factors average around 1.5 to 2.0.

As a general rule, how many of one's journal articles should be in Q1, like a %, and will this vary depending on one's discipline or field of study? Should I be aiming to publish every piece in Q1 as a general rule? My strategy has been considering impact factor and fit to the journal (and three of my most-cited pieces are not in Q1 journals but in Q2 and Q3).

For context, I am an Early Career Researcher 4 years out from PhD, interdisciplinary across qualitative sociology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies (and more recently due to current employment, public health). I am based in Australia, and on fixed-term research-only employment.

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  • I don't pay this close attention to my bibliometrics, and I'm not in your field, but why are undergraduate/postgraduate pieces not ranked?
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented Sep 25, 2019 at 23:28
  • You need to discuss this with a senior person in your own department. It will vary by institution, and even by department within an institution.
    – GEdgar
    Commented Sep 26, 2019 at 0:55

2 Answers 2

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You should always try to publish in the highest prestige journal that you can.

Journal quartiles are a silly way to describe the prestige of your publications. There is a huge difference between the top of Q1 and the bottom of Q1.

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  • I agree with this, but I'm not sure how much of a difference there is between the top and bottom of Q1 in all fields. That's a large gap certainly in physics, but my guess is that it is a smaller gap in math (although still pretty large).
    – JoshuaZ
    Commented Sep 26, 2019 at 1:01
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    @JoshuaZ There are also field that do not have four journals to divide into quartiles.
    – Anonymous Physicist
    Commented Sep 28, 2019 at 0:54
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I don't know your field, but here is a comparable, FWIW:

In the material sciences, I would say at least 75% should be in the upper tier. That is if you are going to be seen as a serious researcher in the US. It's OK if a few go into conference proceedings or requested submissions (not your best stuff). But the bulk should be at least in APS/ACS specialty journals or the better, few Elsevier/Springer equivalents, or JACers/MRS as a floor. (Of course Science/Nature, JACS, PRL are even better...but not reasonable to expect hitting that all the time).

I'm not sure the exact quartiles, but I would basically say any journal that people don't know, that is not a main workhorse in your field, would be in that bad section (not sure if this exactly equates to top quartile, but it's how I would divide it. I would even avoid a higher impact journal (just on some impact list), if it's one you haven't heard of, versus one that is stereotypically standard. But there are a lot of bad journals and a lot of low value papers, especially from overseas, chasing a home, any home. So maybe that is even the approximate top quartile break, numerically.

Maybe not the answer you wanted to hear, but...keeping it real. Academia is a tournament system and you need to try to stay in the upper reaches of journals, pub count, etc. in order to even be marginally competitive during job searches.

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