UOC-co-edited journal "ETHE" among top ranked in all international reference indexes

The scientific journal International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (ETHE), co-edited by the UOC, has placed high in the latest rankings published by major international indexes. The journal, which analyses the latest developments in applying ICT in higher education, is in the first quartile (Q1) in all reference indexes, amongst the top international research journals in its fields of study.

In fact, Journal Citation Reports (JCR), a benchmark journal report among international scientific publications, places ETHE as the top open access e-learning journal. Furthermore, in just a year, the journal has risen from number 75 to number 27 (of a total of 263) in the ranking of general education publications.

It has also substantially improved in terms of its journal impact factor (JIF), a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year, which indicates the importance or rank of a journal by calculating the times its articles are cited. In this regard, ETHE's JIF has gone from 1.922 in 2018 (in the second quartile), to 3.080 (in the first quartile) in 2019.

Along with Journal Citation Reports, the other reference indicators, CiteScore and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), also place ETHE amongst the top international journals in its fields of study. According to Scopus' CiteScore, the journal got 5.6 in 2019, in the first quartile of the two categories in which it features: education and computer science. SCImago Journal Rank, where it scored 1.07, included the journal amongst the highest positions in its newly created e-learning category, in addition to the other two fields. ETHE has also recently improved its h-index in Google Scholar Citations, rising from 24 to 33.

"For a scientific journal, getting such good results in the major indexes gives it greater visibility in the academic world, which means more articles are likely to be accepted and high-quality content to be published," said Josep Maria Duart, co-editor of the journal and professor at the UOC Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences.

Along with its excellent positioning in traditional rankings, ETHE also has noteworthy altmetrics, such as mentions and downloads in social media and publication of articles in generalist newspapers or blogs, among other indicators. "In line with the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), we believe it is essential to commit to prioritizing quality content over traditional metrics, based on number of citations in scientific journals," said Duart.

Last year the journal editorial team received almost 800 articles from over 90 countries and published papers from 5 continents. This growth in the number of papers received has continued in 2020, reaching 470 in the first half of the year. These are the best results in the sixteen-year history of this journal, which is currently co-edited by four universities: Colombia's University of Los Andes, Ireland's Dublin City University, Lithuania's Vytautas Magnus University, and the UOC.