High/low tier journals

[Madmoony]

How do you determine if a journal is high or low tier? Just the impact factor and whether or not it is peer-reviewed? Or are other things considered too? And how good a journal would have to be for it to be considered a top tier journal?

[Usmivka]

Here is a journal article on the declining relevance of "impact factor" (http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4328v1). Long story short, with digital publication, impact factor has much less correlation with how often you get cited, while free online access (which many journal's charge an extra fee for) dramatically increases how likely you are to be cited. So your paper is more likely to stand on its own merits (or failures) than on the journal's.

But reputation still makes some difference. Top-tier journals are those that have a wide readership outside your specific subfield, but by a knowledgeable audience (say, chemists in general, but probably not anthropologists). In my field that would be something like Limnology and Oceanography. In yours, Chemical Reviews and Annual Reviews: Biochemistry. Science and Nature are more like over-the-top, they are read by scientists from many unrelated fields. But articles in these are extremely limited in length, and often lack the in-depth analysis and comparison to other results that are important in evaluating work, so what often happens is a science paper, with a massive appendix that is online only, plus a more detailed work that is closely related in a "normal" top-tier journal.

Edited June 1, 2012 by Usmivka

[Quantum Buckyball]

How do you determine if a journal is high or low tier? Just the impact factor and whether or not it is peer-reviewed? Or are other things considered too? And how good a journal would have to be for it to be considered a top tier journal?

I used to think that impact factor was the only thing that determines weather a journal is "top tier" or "low tier", but not anymore after I entered grad school.

For instance, the field I'm in, one of the top 5 journals only had an impact factor of 1.95 back in 2011. Does that mean the journal isn't good?

I I doubt it, mainly because it's a highly specialized field (i.e. Optics related).

My former PI told me that although impact factor is somewhat important, but you also have to pay attention to the authors, there are a lot of well reputable/knowledgeable/experienced authors in the lower-tier impacted journals mainly because they're either on the editorial board or an editor-in-chef.