The Method Underlying the DGLR Top 40 Aerospace Journal Ranking

Selection of Journals

Obviously the selection of the journals is critical. Journals not selected can not score in the ranking.

Many journals have a relevance to "aerospace". Considered are here predominantly only those journals with a general focus on aeronautical engineering or space engineering.

Not considered are more general journals (e.g. about engineering) that may also have a substantial portion of aerospace papers.

Not considered are more specialized journals in particular fields within aerospace.

Not considered are e.g. journals specialized in turbo machinery or fluid dynamics.

The selection of considered aerospace journals started with journals from existing Aerospace Journal Rankings:

Google Scholar

SCOPUS (CWTS and SJR)

Journal Guide (JG)

University of Illinois (U)

All 20 journals from Google Scholar's ranking were considered (this also caused the inclusion of one magazine and three conferences)

All other journal rankings had to be weeded out, because many included journals did just not make sense here. Not taken were:

journals not actively publishing anymore

journals not publishing in English

journals only working in print with not even a journal web page

journals too general or too specialized inside or outside of aerospace (see above).

Not covered by any of the above selection methods, but covered anyhow are:

for the Impact Factor and SNIP:

International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking

Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance

only for the Impact Factor:

ESA bulletin. Bulletin ASE. European Space Agency

for the free Open Access option:

INCAS Bulletin

Other Open Access journals with a free Open Access option are available, but have not been selected, because they are less "established".

See for more information:

SCHOLZ, Dieter, 2014. Publication Options Suitable for Aircraft Design. - Open Access Journals Edited by Members of European Aerospace Organizations.

(4th Symposium on Collaboration in Aircraft Design, 25. to 27.11.2014, Toulouse, France).

Available from:

http://oa.profscholz.de

Direct Link:

http://www.fzt.haw-hamburg.de/pers/Scholz/OA/OA_PRE_SCAD_14-11-25.pdf

for the affiliation with DGLR:

CEAS Aeronautical Journal

It is acknowledged that every such selection is in the end subjective. This is the selection that made sense to me.

Certainly, it could be weeded out further e.g. by eliminating magazins and conferences.

Ranking of Journals

Three indexing metrics were selected:

Impact Factor

Google Scholar h5-Index

SNIP from SCOPUS

All journals were ranked according to these three metrics.

A journal without a value in the related metric was assigned the next highest integer. E.g. if the ranking runs up to 20 (Google) all journals without a Google ranking were assigned the ranking 21.

The average of these three journal rankings is the (overall) Index.

A ranking in accordance with the overall Index is the (overall) DGLR Aerospace Journal Ranking.

The ranking is based only on available information on the WWW. This has the advantage that input data can be checked by everyone.

Not considered are disclosed journal rankings from the Journal Citation Reports.