The painstaking moment for any researcher is to select a high-indexed journal for publishing his research paper with. Whether you are looking for a reputed journal to publish your paper out of your research interest or as per your university’s compulsion, the struggle is never-ending. In either case, you must shortlist only the good impact factor journals to establish an academic identity in both research academia and higher education. But then, what are good journals? Is it only the impact factor that decides the reputation of a journal or are there any other decisive factors also to judge its credibility?
NO, there are many is the simple answer! Apart from impact factor, journals’ credibility and relevance can be examined through its indexing. Indexing of a journal would mean that the journal has passed the quality as well as the authenticity check and is successfully published on a weekly basis to significantly contribute to the academia. Therefore, if you are up to publish your paper where its visibility ratio is greater, you must set your eyes on some of the reliable and reputed journal indexing databases.
The purpose of journal indexes such as Scopus & SCI is to make the researchers worldwide aware of the novel ideas and research studies devised by the experts of niche research academia. Because these databases maintain the ethical decorum and high publishing standards, getting indexed in any of these databases is not an easy job for any journal.
One of the renowned journal indexing databases are Scopus owned by Elsevier, and Science Citation Index (SCI) owned by Clarivate Analytics (formerly, by Thomson Reuters). Where Scopus focuses on the independent journals in the research field of Science, Technology, Medicine, and Social Sciences, SCI indexes mainly the technical and scientific publications including natural and social sciences.
So if you are confused where to publish your journal paper, take a look at both Scopus-Indexed journals and SCI journals to decide on one. Here we have come up with the criterion for selection of SCI Journal over Scopus or vice versa:
Terms of breadth (SCOPUS) vs terms of depth (SCI)
Where both Scopus and SCI indexed journals are far better than the ones which are non-indexed, there is a tough competition between themselves. Elsevier’s Scopus-indexed journals are slightly weaker than SCI-indexed journals in terms of quality and relevance. The reason being SCI indexing database upholds the greater value of the journals when it comes to authenticity, quality, novelty, and relevance to the academe. And hence, SCI journals follow stringent publishing codes. On the other hand, the publishing norms of Scopus are also stringent but relatively easier to follow and cater to. The quality measurement of the journal undertaken by both indexing databases results in fewer journals indexed in SCI and more in Scopus. You may conclude that Scopus is more in quantity and SCI is more in quality. Therefore, if you are confident about the potential of your journal paper, you may consider SCI journals over Scopus.
Citation Rates
As per a bibliometric research conducted by Rafael Ball and Dirk lunger, SCI journals have shown the higher citation rates when compared to Scopus. The widened scope for indexing journals from a broad range of subject-matter has resulted in a lessened qualitative content, unlike SCI. SCI indexes only 10% of the total journals that apply for getting indexed as not many journals can pass the strict journal selection criteria laid out by SCI. The journal is selected on the basis of limited volumes it produces every year or six months without compromising with its quality. Therefore, the novice researchers prefer SCI journals more when it comes to reference and cite a reliable and authentic source of information. However, there are many good journals indexed by Scopus on the basis of a stringent selection procedure, SCI journals win the race of citation rates. Therefore, SCI journals can be opted for paper publication if one has to keep the citation prospects higher soon after it is published. But because many journals do not get published in SCI, Scopus is still a better choice amongst the other competitors in the market.
Field of Interest
Being launched in 2004 by Elsevier, Scopus has shown tremendous growth in terms of journals indexing. It has indexed all the journals published after 1995 from every arena of research academia while maintaining the research and ethical decorum. But since SCI started the race a little earlier than Scopus, SCI has expanded its horizons to almost every research area. But still, there is hope for Scopus as it encompasses many good journals in a particular research area where SCI has limited number of indexed journals which are published before 1995 as well as till today. Because Scopus has a large volume of journals and research articles when compared to SCI, it provides the publishing opportunities to the newbie researchers which SCI fails to do. Therefore, choosing Scopus over SCI would be a good option to prepare for the long run in academia.
Kind of Journal Paper
SCI is a well-established journal indexing database where Scopus is still expanding. But still, SCI doesn’t fully support the publication of review papers and instead, promote publishing of empirical or technical research papers. However, this is not the case with Scopus as both research paper as well as review paper can be published in Scopus journals. This again brings you to the quality terms of SCI-indexed journals and Scopus indexed journals. Because many people fail to come up with the originality from the existing knowledge, publishing review papers with SCI journals is a challenge in itself. It will only publish your review paper if it is impeccable in terms of novel ideas, and qualitative content. Therefore, you can choose Scopus journals for publishing your review paper and SCI journals for your empirical paper.
On the basis of above-discussed factors, you may make up your mind why you should choose SCI journal or Scopus journal. The process of paper publishing in both journals is tough, but your hard work will pay you off upon the successful paper publication in either of these.