Journal quartiles explained: Q1–Q4, SJR, CiteScore and impact factor
What Q1 to Q4 actually measure, how SJR, CiteScore and the Journal Impact Factor differ, and how much weight to give them when choosing a journal.
Quartiles divide the journals in a subject category into four equal groups by a citation metric. Q1 is the top 25%, Q4 the bottom 25%. They are useful for a quick sense of a journal’s standing, but they are often misread.
The main metrics
Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
Published by Clarivate in Journal Citation Reports, based on Web of Science data. Roughly, it is the number of citations in one year to items a journal published in the previous two years, divided by the number of citable items. JCR quartiles are based on JIF within each category. Access requires a subscription.
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
Calculated by SCImago from Scopus data. Citations from highly ranked journals count for more than citations from lower-ranked ones. SJR quartiles are free to view on the SCImago website.
CiteScore
Published by Elsevier from Scopus data, using a four-year window of citations and documents. CiteScore percentiles and quartiles are free to view.
Common misunderstandings
- There is no single “Q1”. A journal can be Q1 in SJR and Q2 in JCR, or Q1 in one category and Q2 in another. Always say which source and category you mean.
- Quartiles compare journals within a field. A Q1 journal in a small field may have a lower impact factor than a Q2 journal in a large one.
- Quartiles say nothing about your paper. They describe average citations to a journal, not the quality of an individual article or its chance of acceptance.
- Rankings change every year. Check the current edition, not a screenshot in an email.
How SubmitPilot shows tiers
When SCImago data is loaded, the journal finder shows SJR best quartiles. Otherwise it shows an “impact tier”: the matched journals are ranked by their two-year mean citedness in OpenAlex and split into four groups. This is relative to your results, not an official quartile, and it is labelled that way. See the methodology for details.