Definition · Plain-language
Journal quartiles
Journal quartiles (Q1 to Q4) divide the journals in a subject category into four ranked bands according to a chosen metric, so a journal’s standing can be read at a glance within its field.
The step most authors miss
Doing CRediT right? Don’t stop at the statement.
A CRediT statement credits you inside one paper. The recognition CRediT was built for happens when those roles are tied to you, persistently. Sign in with your ORCID — free — and claim your CRediT contributions on casrai.org, the home of the standard. They become a verified, portable part of your identity, not a line that disappears into one PDF.
Free: claim your contributions, then export a journal-ready CRediT statement, schema.org structured data, JATS XML, CSV or BibTeX — and preview your public profile. A membership publishes that profile publicly and verifies the journals you serve.
How quartiles are derived
A quartile is produced by ranking every journal in a subject category by a single metric and then splitting that ordered list into four equal parts. The metric is usually the Journal Impact Factor (in Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports) or the SCImago Journal Rank (from the Scopus-based SJR portal). The top quarter of journals form Q1, the next quarter Q2, then Q3, with the lowest quarter as Q4. Because the ranking is relative to other journals in the same category, a quartile expresses position within a field rather than an absolute level of quality.
Why a journal can be Q1 and Q3 at once
Quartiles are assigned per subject category, and many journals are classified in more than one category. A journal might rank in the top quarter of a small or less competitive category (Q1) while sitting in the third quarter of a larger, more competitive one (Q3). The two main sources also use different underlying metrics and different category schemes, so a journal’s quartile in Journal Citation Reports need not match its quartile in SCImago. Always note which metric, database and category a quartile refers to.
Reading quartiles responsibly
Quartiles are a quick, normalised signal that is easier to compare across fields than a raw impact factor, but they share the limits of any citation metric. They describe a journal, not an individual article or author, and journal-level averages are skewed by a few highly cited papers. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) warns specifically against using journal-based metrics as a proxy for the quality of individual research or researchers. Treat a quartile as one contextual indicator alongside reading the work itself.
Key facts
At a glance
- Definition: four ranked bands (Q1–Q4) of journals within a subject category
- Q1: the top 25% of journals in that category by the chosen metric
- Q4: the bottom 25% of journals in that category
- Common metrics: Journal Impact Factor (JCR) and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
- Category-specific: the same journal can sit in different quartiles per subject
- Caveat: DORA cautions against using journal metrics to judge individual work
Common misconceptions
What people often get wrong
Often heard: A journal has a single fixed quartile across all of science.
Actually: Quartiles are assigned within each subject category. A journal classified in several categories can hold different quartiles in each, depending on how it ranks among that category’s journals.
Often heard: A Q1 journal guarantees that any article in it is high quality.
Actually: A quartile describes the journal’s relative ranking, not individual articles. DORA warns against using journal-level metrics as a proxy for the quality of any single paper or researcher.
Often heard: A journal’s SCImago quartile and its Journal Citation Reports quartile are the same.
Actually: They often differ. SCImago uses the SJR metric and Scopus categories, while Journal Citation Reports uses the Impact Factor and its own categories, so the quartiles need not agree.
Going deeper
