Scholar Metrics

Scopus quartiles and Web of Science indexing, shown directly on Google Scholar.

Lookups run on your device No data collected Chrome extension

What you see on every article

Emotion and its relation to cognition from Vygotsky's perspective

Q1 SSCI SJR 1.22 European Journal of Psychology of Education

What it does

Google Scholar tells you where a paper was published, but not whether that venue is any good. This extension adds that missing layer.

On every search result and every publication in an author profile, it shows the journal's Scopus quartile (Q1–Q4, from SCImago) and which Web of Science index carries it — SCIE, SSCI, AHCI or ESCI — along with the SJR score and open-access status. Above the list, a summary bar counts every index found.

On a search result

Teacher agency: A systematic review of international literature

Q2 ESCI SJR 0.49 OA Issues in Educational Research

Vygotsky's, Leontiev's and Engeström's cultural-historical (activity) theories

Q1 SSCI SJR 0.59 Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science

Reading the colours

Q1 → Q4 Scopus quartile, green through red
SSCI Social Sciences Citation Index
SCIE Science Citation Index Expanded
AHCI Arts & Humanities Citation Index
ESCI Emerging Sources, the newer tier
SJR the score itself, as plain text

Count what you like

The summary bar lists only the indexes actually present, each with a count. Every chip is a + button.

On an author profile
Indexes found 52 publications on this page
Scopus · SCImago Q130 +Q25 +Q32 +Not in Scopus1
Web of Science +SCIE16 +SSCI13 +AHCI2 ESCI14 +Not in WoS8
Other +Open access11 +Unidentified14
38 of 52 publications Q1  +  ESCI
counted once each, even if a publication is in several
+ Click + on any index to add it to a total. Add as many as you like — they combine, and each publication is counted once even when it belongs to several indexes.
! Counts cover the publications loaded so far. Google Scholar loads a profile in batches — click “Show more” until it stops and the counts grow automatically.

The total is a union, not a sum: Q1 (30) plus ESCI (14) gives 38, not 44, because six publications are in both and each is counted once.

What the numbers mean

These metrics are useful, and routinely over-read. Here is what each one actually measures.

MetricWhat it measures
SJR SCImago Journal Rank. Average prestige-weighted citations per document over three years. A citation from a highly cited journal counts for more than one from a rarely cited journal. There is no universal “good” value — 1.5 is strong in education and unremarkable in molecular biology.
Q1–Q4 Journals in a subject category ranked by SJR and split into four equal groups. Q1 is the top 25%. Because quartiles are relative to a field, they compare across disciplines better than raw scores do.
SCIE
SSCI
AHCI
The three selective indexes of the Web of Science Core Collection — sciences, social sciences, and arts & humanities. They are peers, not a ranking: which one a journal sits in reflects its subject area, not its standing, and a journal can appear in two. In many institutions, SSCI is the threshold that counts for hiring and promotion.
ESCI Emerging Sources Citation Index — a separate, newer tier for journals that meet basic quality criteria but not yet the Core Collection standard. ESCI journals get no Journal Impact Factor. Many are perfectly respectable; it is simply not equivalent to SSCI or SCIE.
Journal
h-index
On hover. The largest h where the journal has h articles each cited at least h times. It accumulates with age, so old journals out-score young ones regardless of current quality.
Cites/doc
(2 years)
On hover. The closest figure here to the familiar Journal Impact Factor, but computed from Scopus rather than Web of Science — so it will not equal a JIF quoted elsewhere.
Coverage On hover. The years Scopus has indexed the journal. A span that ended a few years ago means the journal was discontinued from Scopus, which is a meaningful warning sign.
OA The journal is fully open access according to SCImago. This describes the journal's publishing model, not whether one article happens to be free to read somewhere.
The one caveat that matters most. The quartile shown is the best quartile across all of a journal's subject categories, which is SCImago's own convention. A journal can be Q1 in a small niche category and Q3 in the large one that actually describes your work — and it will show as Q1 here. Hover the badge for the per-category breakdown, and for anything consequential, read the category relevant to your field.

Using it well

Written with graduate students and early-career researchers in mind, because these are the decisions where a misread metric costs the most.

Choosing where to submit

Worth doing

  • Check indexing before writing the cover letter, not after acceptance.
  • Match the subject category, not just the quartile. A Q2 journal read by your field beats a Q1 in an unrelated one.
  • Check the coverage years — a journal dropped from Scopus will not index your paper.
  • Read your institution's promotion wording. If it says SSCI or Core Collection, an ESCI journal may not count.
  • Verify on scimagojr.com and mjl.clarivate.com before anything that goes in a CV or grant form.

Warning signs

  • In neither Scopus nor Web of Science — find out why. It may be new and legitimate, or predatory.
  • Unsolicited invitations promising review in days.
  • An editorial board you cannot independently verify.
  • Article charges that only appear after acceptance.
  • A scope so broad it appears to accept anything.

Evaluating what you read

What it does not tell you

When it stays blank

Sometimes no badge appears. That is deliberate, and worth knowing about.

On search pages Google Scholar often shortens a long journal name to something like International Journal of …. Hundreds of journals begin that way, so the name no longer identifies one. Rather than guess and risk showing you the wrong quartile, the extension shows nothing. Open the article to see the full journal name, or check the same paper on the author's profile, where names are not shortened.

A blank can also simply mean the journal is in neither Scopus nor Web of Science. And where a name is matched from an abbreviation or a shortened form, the badge is drawn with a dashed outline — a reminder to confirm it before relying on it.

You can loosen or tighten this behaviour in the extension's settings.

Privacy

Nothing is collected and nothing is sent anywhere. The extension reads the journal name shown under a result, looks it up in the list of journals stored inside it, and draws a badge. That is all it does.

It saves two things on your own computer: your display preferences, and the journal names it has already looked up so that repeat visits are instant. Neither includes article titles, authors, searches or web addresses, and both can be cleared from the extension at any time.

It runs only on Google Scholar pages and asks for no access to any other site, so it cannot read anything else you browse. There is no analytics, no tracking and no advertising.

Read the full privacy policy →

Where the data comes from

Quartiles, SJR scores, subject categories and open-access status come from the SCImago Journal Rank dataset, derived from Scopus and covering more than 32,000 journals. Index membership — SCIE, SSCI, AHCI and ESCI — comes from Clarivate's Master Journal List.

Both are annual snapshots, so a paper is shown with its journal's current standing rather than its standing at the time of publication. Indexing changes through the year, so for anything consequential — a submission, a promotion file, a funding form — confirm on scimagojr.com and mjl.clarivate.com.

Scholar Metrics is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Google, Elsevier, Scopus, SCImago, or Clarivate.