Journal rankings · indicator year 2012
Choose a field to open its ranking, or a journal to find its row in its subfield’s list.
Subfield ranking · 2012
Library and Information Sciences journal rankings 2012
39 ranked journals · Subfield in Social Sciences
Library and Information Sciences has 39 ranked journals in 2012. Its median journal scores above the world average: OJR 1.29 against 1.00, up 0.01 on 2011. A journal needs OJR 2.23 to reach Q1. The top three are Journal of Library Administration, College & Research Libraries, and The Journal of Academic Librarianship.
Ranks and citation indicators: 2012. Journal access status and listed APC: source snapshot September 23, 2026.
Journals whose main subfield sits in this category and that published at least 30 citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) in 2009–2011, the window the 2012 score is computed on.
The OpenJournalRank Indicator (OJR) is a free, publicly available metric of a journal’s field-normalized citation impact, computed from open OpenAlex citation data. It compares citations to a journal’s papers from the previous three years with the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so 1.00 is the world average and values can be compared across fields. It is computed with the NCI3 method.
The middle OJR among ranked journals in this category: half score higher, half lower. 1.00 is the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type.
The dot is this category, the solid tick is the median of all ranked journals and the dashed line is the world average.
Share of ranked journals in this category that are fully open access, so every paper is free to read. Hybrid journals, which sell subscriptions and open single papers for a fee, are not counted.
Median list price of the article processing charge, in US dollars, among ranked journals in this category that list a price above zero. Journals with a listed APC of $0 and journals with no known price are left out of this median. The At a glance table below gives a second median that includes the $0 prices.
Subfields of Social Sciences (22)
39 ranked journals
Filters
Rank is the position by OJR within the list on screen; 1 is the highest. | OJR is field-normalized 3-year citation impact: 1.00 is the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so values compare across fields. The badge is the journal’s quartile in this list. | Citations per paper over a two-year window, counted from OpenAlex. It is not field-normalized, so compare it only between journals of the same field. ▲ or ▼ is the change from 2011. This is OpenJournalRank’s own count, not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. | Citable documents (articles, reviews and conference papers) published in 2009–2011, the window the 2012 OJR is computed on. A journal needs at least 30 to be ranked. | Share of the journal’s 2009–2011 papers that are free to read in any open-access form. The green OA tag next to a title marks a fully open-access journal. | List price of the article processing charge in US dollars. “$0 listed” means the listed price is zero; a dash means no price is listed. | The line is the journal’s OJR from 2003 to 2012. | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1Journal of Library AdministrationTaylor & Francis · United States | 3.71Q1 | 1.83 0.86 up from 2011 | 197 | 7% | — | ||
2College & Research LibrariesOAAssociation of College and Research Libraries · United States | 3.64Q1 | 2.70 1.38 up from 2011 | 169 | 100% | — | ||
3The Journal of Academic LibrarianshipElsevier BV · United States | 3.40Q1 | 1.49 0.16 up from 2011 | 303 | 8% | $3,990 | ||
4The Library QuarterlyUniversity of Chicago Press · United States | 3.27Q1 | 0.93 0.23 down from 2011 | 79 | 4% | — | ||
5Reference Services ReviewEmerald Publishing Limited · United Kingdom | 3.06Q1 | 1.48 0.17 down from 2011 | 136 | 11% | — | ||
6portal Libraries and the AcademyJohns Hopkins University Press · United States | 2.92Q1 | 0.79 0.07 down from 2011 | 131 | 13% | — | ||
7Library trendsJohns Hopkins University Press · United States | 2.85Q1 | 1.07 0.26 up from 2011 | 131 | 25% | — | ||
8Journal of Information LiteracyOAChartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals · United Kingdom | 2.71Q1 | 1.48 0.36 up from 2011 | 49 | 100% | — | ||
9Journal of Librarianship and Information ScienceSAGE Publishing · United Kingdom | 2.69Q1 | 0.87 1.02 down from 2011 | 69 | 12% | $3,650 | ||
10Journal of Education for Library and Information ScienceUniversity of Toronto Press | 2.23Q1 | 0.70 0.71 down from 2011 | 61 | 0% | — | ||
11New Review of Academic LibrarianshipTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 2.06Q2 | 1.22 0.04 up from 2011 | 51 | 0% | — | ||
12Journal of Library & Information Services in Distance LearningTaylor & Francis · United States | 1.76Q2 | 0.50 0.27 down from 2011 | 61 | 7% | — | ||
13Behavioral & Social Sciences LibrarianTaylor & Francis · United States | 1.75Q2 | 0.95 0.10 down from 2011 | 55 | 6% | — | ||
14Library ManagementEmerald Publishing Limited · United Kingdom | 1.60Q2 | 0.82 0.20 up from 2011 | 236 | 8% | — | ||
15The International Information & Library ReviewTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 1.51Q2 | 0.79 0.27 up from 2011 | 200 | 0% | — | ||
16Public & Access Services QuarterlyTaylor & Francis · United States | 1.49Q2 | 1.12 0.84 up from 2011 | 127 | 7% | — | ||
17Communications in Information LiteracyOACommunications in Information Literacy · United States | 1.49Q2 | 0.79 0.29 up from 2011 | 46 | 100% | — | ||
18LibriOADe Gruyter · Germany | 1.34Q2 | 0.91 0.52 up from 2011 | 86 | 17% | $0 listed | ||
19Library ReviewEmerald Publishing Limited · United Kingdom | 1.31Q2 | 0.60 0.05 up from 2011 | 318 | 3% | — | ||
20College & Undergraduate LibrariesTaylor & Francis · United States | 1.29Q2 | 0.51 0.05 down from 2011 | 93 | 4% | — | ||
21IFLA JournalSAGE Publishing · United Kingdom | 1.28Q3 | 0.41 0.04 up from 2011 | 127 | 18% | $3,650 | ||
22Performance Measurement and MetricsEmerald Publishing Limited · United Kingdom | 1.24Q3 | 1.05 0.09 up from 2011 | 62 | 9% | — | ||
23Australian Academic & Research LibrariesRoutledge · Australia | 1.20Q3 | 0.60 0.23 up from 2011 | 142 | 92% | — | ||
24Public Library QuarterlyTaylor & Francis · United States | 1.16Q3 | 0.79 0.19 up from 2011 | 68 | 8% | — | ||
25Partnership The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and ResearchOAThe Partnership · Canada | 0.95Q3 | 0.38 0.17 up from 2011 | 94 | 100% | — | ||
26Canadian Journal of Information and Library ScienceOACanadian Association for Information Science · Canada | 0.94Q3 | 0.55 0.23 up from 2011 | 53 | 100% | — | ||
27The Australian Library JournalTaylor & Francis · Australia | 0.92Q3 | 0.41 0.19 up from 2011 | 90 | 73% | — | ||
28Reference & User Services QuarterlyAmerican Library Association · United States | 0.65Q3 | 0.25 0.08 down from 2011 | 536 | 73% | — | ||
29Library and Information ResearchOALibrary and Information Research Group · United Kingdom | 0.60Q3 | 0.33 0.08 down from 2011 | 137 | 100% | — | ||
30College & Research Libraries NewsOAAssociation of College and Research Libraries · United States | 0.55Q3 | 0.35 0.12 up from 2011 | 570 | 96% | — | ||
31Evidence Based Library and Information PracticeOAUniversity of Alberta · Canada | 0.54Q4 | 0.35 0.02 up from 2011 | 230 | 100% | — | ||
32Journal of Access ServicesTaylor & Francis · United States | 0.49Q4 | 0.29 0.04 down from 2011 | 94 | 0% | — | ||
33Community & Junior College LibrariesTaylor & Francis · United States | 0.43Q4 | 0.17 0.01 down from 2011 | 102 | 0% | — | ||
34Journal of Business & Finance LibrarianshipTaylor & Francis · United Kingdom | 0.41Q4 | 0.34 0.13 down from 2011 | 105 | 0% | — | ||
35Nordic Journal of Information Literacy in Higher EducationOAUniversity of Bergen · Norway | 0.34Q4 | 0.04 0.04 down from 2011 | 51 | 100% | — | ||
36Virginia LibrariesOAVirginia Tech University Libraries · United States | 0.21Q4 | 0.00 0.15 down from 2011 | 55 | 100% | — | ||
37The Southeastern LibrarianOAUnited States | 0.08Q4 | 0.00 0.04 down from 2011 | 66 | 89% | — | ||
38Library and Leadership ManagementPublisher not listed | 0.07Q4 | 0.02 0.12 down from 2011 | 82 | 0% | — | ||
39Maine policy reviewOAUnited States | 0.02Q4 | 0.05 0.02 down from 2011 | 77 | 97% | — |
Subfields of Social Sciences, with Library and Information Sciences highlighted.
- Sociology and Political Science1,049
- Education564
- Political Science and International Relations287
- Gender Studies57
- Communication54
- Safety Research49
- Public Administration48
- Health43
- Transportation40
- Library and Information Sciences39
- Linguistics and Language38
- Law37
- Anthropology36
- Urban Studies36
- Demography33
- Geography, Planning and Development24
- Cultural Studies10
- Development3
- General Social Sciences2
- Human Factors and Ergonomics1
- Archeology0
- Life-span and Life-course Studies0
Journals
Citations made in 2012. Corpus-wide, 75.7% of core-journal articles and reviews published that year have at least one matched reference; the share varies by journal and field.
9 additional Library and Information Sciences journals with metrics are unranked under this release’s eligibility rules: a journal needs at least 30 citable documents in 2009–2011, at least 80% of them with a subfield, and a positive world-average expectation. Ranks are within the whole category; filters hide rows without re-ranking. OJR excludes self-citations.
At a glance
Indicator year: 2012. Publication window: 2009–2011. How these summaries are calculated
- Ranked journals
- 39
- Window papers (baseline)
- 6,171 +17.9% from indicator year 2009
- Median OJR
- 1.29 +55.6% from indicator year 2009
- Rising journals (2025)
- 0
Window papers are the baseline paper population: citable papers (articles, reviews and conference papers) from 2009–2011 in all journals of the world-average baseline, including non-core journals, counted by each paper’s own subfield. They are not the papers of the ranked journals alone.
| Measure | Year series | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ranked journals | 26 | 26 | 28 | 30 | 32 | 30 | 30 | 34 | 36 | 36 | 38 | 39 | 39 | 41 | 43 | 44 | 43 | 41 | 42 | 44 | 41 | 41 | 42 | 41 | 40 | 38 | |
| Window papers (baseline) | 2,623 | 2,730 | 3,048 | 3,403 | 3,671 | 3,772 | 3,878 | 4,238 | 4,743 | 5,234 | 5,613 | 5,920 | 6,171 | 6,083 | 5,893 | 5,519 | 5,326 | 5,069 | 4,955 | 4,770 | 4,650 | 4,610 | 4,529 | 4,380 | 4,109 | 4,152 | |
| Median OJR | 0.63 | 0.678 | 0.77 | 0.87 | 0.74 | 0.680 | 0.96 | 0.946 | 0.953 | 0.83 | 0.9227 | 1.28 | 1.29 | 1.39 | 1.1000 | 1.19 | 1.08 | 1.1002 | 0.954 | 0.9228 | 0.995 | 0.88 | 0.94 | 0.75 | 0.86 | 0.79 |
How to read these rankings
- OJR, the OpenJournalRank Indicator
- A field-normalized 3-year citation impact, computed from OpenAlex with the NCI3 method. It divides the citations a journal’s papers received by the world average for papers of the same subfield, year and type, so 1.00 is the world average and 2.00 means twice as many citations as expected. Because it is normalized, it can be compared across fields. Read the methodology
- Quartiles
- Q1 to Q4 split the ranked journals of the list you are viewing into four equal groups by OJR. A journal’s quartile depends on the list: the same journal can be Q1 in its subfield and Q2 among all journals.
- Impact factor (2-year)
- Citations per paper over a two-year window, counted from OpenAlex. It is easy to compare with familiar impact factors but is not field-normalized, so compare it only within a field. It is not Clarivate’s Journal Impact Factor. Why it differs from the Journal Impact Factor
- Rank ranges
- Each rank in the latest year carries a likely range from 1,000 resamples of the journal’s papers. Where two journals’ ranges overlap, the data cannot tell them apart, so treat neighbouring ranks as ties.