Table of Contents
What is a Q1 ranked journal?
Q1 is shorthand for the first quartile or the top 25% of a subject area. These ratings are updated yearly and usually run on a three or four year cycle (i.e. they rate journals based on their performance over the last three or four years). It can divide into four different quadrants starting with Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. Q index simply means quartile which is the ranking of any journal that belongs to a specific or particular field of discipline and also known as the parameter of measuring or ranking of a journal. Q1 is occupied by the top 25% of journals in the list; Q2 is occupied by journals in the 25 to 50% group; Q3 is occupied by journals in the 50 to 75% group and Q4 is occupied by journals in the 75 to 100% group. There are a total of 1460 Elsevier Q1 journals in 2023. The top 60 Q1 Elsevier journals are listed in this blog post. However, the researchers can download the complete list of Elsevier Q1 journals from the official website of Scopus.
Which is better Q1 or Q2 journal?
Q1 is occupied by the top 25% of journals in the list; Q2 is occupied by journals in the 25 to 50% group; Q3 is occupied by journals in the 50 to 75% group and Q4 is occupied by journals in the 75 to 100% group. The most prestigious journals within a subject area are those occupying the first quartile, Q1. For checking of journal quartiles (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) for the indexed journals in the ISI/SSCI one can check Master journal list and Journal citation report. You can search from the web of science, Journal Citation Reports. The top 5% of journals have impact factors approximately equal to or greater than 6 (610 journals or 4.9% of the journals tracked by JCR). Lancet, The is a journal covering the technologies/fields/categories related to Medicine (miscellaneous) (Q1). It is published by Elsevier Ltd.. The overall rank of Lancet, The is 26. According to SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), this journal is ranked 15.652. The majority of journals, in fact, fall in the bracket of an IF of 1-1+. So, a journal with an IF of 2-2.5 would be considered having a higher impact than these journals. A journal with an IF of 5 or above would be considered high-impact, but note that these would be fewer in number.