25

Just to keep it simple: What rankings of mathematical conferences and journals are available in the internet? (I'm only interested in rankings, not about any discussion about rankings.)

  • 2
    MathSciNet's MCQ is a numerical value like impact factor for journals covered by Mathematical Reviews. – Name Jul 10 '13 at 10:15
  • 1
    I think this question is better asked at http://academia.stackexchange.com/ – JRN Jul 10 '13 at 12:49
  • 3
    I have some hard time understanding how this question is off-topic. –  Jul 11 '13 at 13:18
  • 7
    @Frank This is not an unanimous view but, for many people here (myself included) MO is for mathematics only, not for all things of interest to research mathematicians. I hope it is clear to you that your question is not mathematics. – Felipe Voloch Jul 11 '13 at 13:26
  • 5
    I voted to close because one can simply google these things and there is even a wikipage about this kind of thing. I don't see what can be added by the community other than linking to what google already has. Your question on Godel, on the other hand, is a great fit. – Benjamin Steinberg Jul 11 '13 at 15:17
  • 1
    @Frank different people in community have different opinions.often questions are closed and reopened. – Alexander Chervov Jul 11 '13 at 17:04
  • 10
    @BenjaminSteinberg: Ben: Actually, most of the sources which google finds are not very useful (for unrelated reason, yesterday I spent 2 hours trying). 1. wiki page lists top 10 only. 2. IMU working group/blog- nothing of value. 3. ARC is again not very useful and, now, dated. The best sources I found are behind the paywall: a) MathSciNet: Top 100 by IF. b) Univ of California library's subscription for ICR: Pretty much everything. (Subject to the usual caveat that IF in many cases produces crappy answers, especially for applied math journals.) – Misha Jul 12 '13 at 22:15
  • 6
    Ok I voted to reopen since there is enough demand. – Benjamin Steinberg Jul 13 '13 at 01:01
  • 29
    How does one rank mathematical conferences? "Banach Algebras, 2009: 10/10 for vodka, 3/10 for fruit..." – Yemon Choi Jul 13 '13 at 01:59
  • Answers to this questions are prone to manipulation outside MO by @Frank or others. This is not a nice question on a group devoted to the research and serious mathematical entertainment. We should not be any part of games related to ficticiously promoting or destroing some mathematicians' careers. – Włodzimierz Holsztyński Nov 09 '16 at 03:01
  • 2
    I hate that this question has been closed as off-topic. 1) The help center says this sort of question "can be helpful to the community, but it is extremely tricky to ask them in a way that produces a useful response". Well, this question has a good number of upvotes, many favorites, and several useful answers, so clearly it's been asked in a way that's helpful to the community. 2) What in the world is the harm in this sort of question? – Joshua P. Swanson May 03 '18 at 21:36
  • @JoshSwanson It was closed some 3 years ago, 3 years after it was opened. The site's standards and culture have changed noticeably from 6 years ago, and a lot of questions such as this one which were once well-received are no longer considered desirable. And number of upvotes is a poor measure of on-topic-ness; it measures popularity, only, which is pretty easy to achieve with off topic things. – zibadawa timmy Mar 14 '19 at 19:31
  • 1
    @zibadawatimmy: Perhaps I was unclear. I'm not disputing that this question is "off-topic". I'm saying I despise that classification in this case. The stated justification about not producing a useful response is not applicable here since there are plenty of useful responses. I also have yet to hear any convincing harm caused by this sort of question. On the flip side, StackExchange communities getting trigger-happy with closing threads many people actually find useful is so common as to be a trope, which in my view is the real harm. – Joshua P. Swanson Mar 14 '19 at 23:50

5 Answers5

13

The Australian Mathematical Society have produced a ranking:

http://www.austms.org.au/Rankings/0101_AustMS_final_ranked.html

It is widely used (for instance, by my own institution in the UK).

When choosing where to submit I also make use of the following ranking of journal prices/ value:

http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/~rehmann/BIB/AMS/Price_per_Volume.html

Of course it's a different type of ranking, but you might argue that it's a lot less subjective!

Nick Gill
  • 11,161
  • 39
  • 70
  • 5
    I should point out that the Australian ranking linked above is produced by the ARC (our analogue of the NSF, say), not the Australian Maths Society. It's unfortunate it's still being used, because it's already obsolete. There were sufficiently many complaints about the process the went into constructing it that it isn't going to be repeated, but now that list is simply being used as is, with all its bad decisions and omissions. (It's the nature of the game...) – Scott Morrison Jul 10 '13 at 13:17
  • 6
    The ARC contracted the AustMS to produce the rankings for mathematics journals then adopted it with a few changes/errors. What appears on the AustMS page is the AustMS version, including some additions that were made in preparation for an extra ARC round that never happened. Incidentally, in the URL given, as well as 0101 use 0102 through 0105. – Brendan McKay Jul 11 '13 at 13:42
  • 2
    @Brendan-McKay According to http://theconversation.com/journal-rankings-ditched-the-experts-respond-1598 since 2011, the Australian government has abandoned this system of ranking journals. – Name Jul 13 '13 at 10:00
10

I myself am not very fun of rankings. But when the Library of my University decided to cut down some of the journal subscriptions (due to the budget crisis in the Eurozone), I gave my personal viewpoint by means of creating a unbiased ranking of Mathematical Journals.

Mainly what I wanted to measure was the impact of the Maths published by each Journal throughout its life on today's Math. I took the raw data from MathSciNet. The result can be consulted in the web page of the society journal of the Spanish Math Society (the "Gaceta de la Real Sociedad Matematica Española"):

http://gaceta.rsme.es/adicional.php?id=1215

and also in my personal web page:

http://personal.us.es/arias/V17N3_439.pdf

The paper, where I explain the procedure devised for creating the ranking my procedure, is in Spanish, but at the end you can find the ranking, which is easily understood.

My ranking treats on the same footing all journals in applied, pure and statistical math.

juan
  • 6,976
  • 1
    A useful addition to this, if you do a second one, is mark which journals are free to read or open access, with a disambiguation between those OA journals that one needs to pay to publish (e.g. Research in the Mathematical Sciences) and those that cost nothing to publish in (e.g. Theory and Applications of Categories, New York Journal of Mathematics). Also helpful would be flags on journals that are no longer around, such as Topology, Journal of K-theory. Would you consider making this table available in a more adaptable format, with a brief description of the derivation in English? – David Roberts May 07 '15 at 23:21
  • @DavidRoberts Journals that are no longer around continue to have impact on today's Math. So their inclusion is obligatory. A Library should assure the access of these deceased journals. – juan May 09 '15 at 07:52
  • 1
    Sure, I do agree on that. Knowing that they are discontinued at a glance may save some time and effort on the part of someone trying to look for the journal for other reasons. And note my other point: having this in spreadsheet form would be more useful than merely a table in a pdf. – David Roberts May 11 '15 at 23:55
  • It is not a priori clear to me that it's a good idea to put applied, pure, and statistical maths journals on the same footing, as these areas could potentially have vastly different publication practices (the same can be said for individual subjects within each category, of course). But maybe you already address this in your methodology. – R. van Dobben de Bruyn Aug 14 '20 at 18:31
  • 1
    Also, I'm not sure I understand your usage of the word 'unbiased'. I understand that this means at least that you do not take 'prestige' or other subjective qualities into account (although there could be reasons to do so), but using a renormalised impact factor as the only basis will favour certain types of papers. For example, long foundational papers may get more citations than papers that settle well-known 'terminal' problems. From what I can tell, you do a pretty good job of justifying your procedure, but what I couldn't find is an analysis of its shortcomings. – R. van Dobben de Bruyn Aug 14 '20 at 18:56
9

There is the Report of the IMU/ICIAM Working Group on Journal Ranking (June 2011), and the IMU blog on mathematical journals, discussing exactly these questions, and giving lists of such rankings.

Peter Michor
  • 24,985
3

Here are the rankings of (not just math) journals employed by some countries:

2

You can also check out http://zbmath.org/journals/ for details on the journal content. It doesn't give you a ranking though but you see at a glance, who published in the journal you are interested in or what topics are represented in the articles.