What is the h-index of a journal?
Applied to a journal, the h-index is the largest number h such that the journal has at least h articles cited at least h times each. Google Scholar uses a time-limited variant, the h5-index, which counts only articles published in the last five complete calendar years. It is not the Journal Impact Factor and does not replace it.
Detail
h5-index and h5-median
The h5-index is the h-index calculated only on articles from the last five complete calendar years. The h5-median is the median number of citations of the articles that make up that core. Two journals with the same h5-index can have very different medians.
What Google Scholar covers
Google Scholar Metrics currently cover articles published between 2020 and 2024 and include only publications with at least a hundred articles in that period. A small or recent journal may simply not appear.
What OpenAlex shows
OpenAlex, an open database, gives three indicators for each journal: the h-index, the i10-index and the 2-year mean citedness. The last one counts citations received in the year before the current one by works published in the two years before that — the same kind of calculation as an impact factor, made on different data.
How to read these numbers on JournalFees
On journal pages the indicators come from OpenAlex, with the source and the date next to each value. They are not the Clarivate Journal Impact Factor or the Elsevier CiteScore and should not be presented as such.