January 21, 2008

Law Journal Rankings 2000-2007

The law journal ranking page has been updated for the survey period
2000-2007, see http://lawlib.wlu.edu/LJ

Significant changes to the methodology occurred this year:

Instead of using Westlaw searches like VOL +1 JNL +6 YEAR searches were
changed to VOL +1 JNL /8 YEAR.

The final cut-off date for searches changed from October 31 to December
31

The Impact-factor calculation changed from a simple method of dividing
total cites over 8 years by items published in those 8 years, to a more
complex method of reporting the median value of the annual
impact-factors. The annual impact-factors being calculated by dividing
the cites received by a journal in each individual year of the survey
period by the items published by the journal in that same year and all
other years back to the beginning of the survey period.

The weight given to impact-factor vs. total cites in the combined score
ranking was reduced from 0.57 to 0.34

More information on these decisions is at
http://lawlib.wlu.edu/LJ/methodchange2007.asp

Posted by doyle at January 21, 2008 8:29 AM