SCImago Quartiles Explained: What Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 Journals Mean

When a promotion committee, a doctoral school or a funder asks for "a Q1 journal", it usually means a quartile from one of two rankings: SCImago, built on Scopus data and free to consult, or Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports (JCR), built on Web of Science and the impact factor. This guide explains the SCImago quartiles shown on this site, how they compare with other journal metrics, and where they stop being useful.

What Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 mean

SCImago ranks the journals of each Scopus subject category by SJR and, in its own words, divides them "into four equal groups, four quartiles": Q1 holds the quarter with the highest values, then Q2, Q3 and Q4.

A quartile is therefore relative: a journal can stay Q1 while its SJR falls, if its neighbours fall further. It is field-specific: in the 2025 edition, the lowest SJR still in Q1 was about 0.21 in History but about 1.6 in Cell Biology, so raw SJR values should not be compared across fields. And it is annual.

How SCImago calculates the SJR

The SCImago Journal Rank was introduced by González-Pereira, Guerrero-Bote and Moya-Anegón in 2010 and refined in 2012 as "SJR2", the version SCImago links to as its detailed description. It adapts the idea behind Google's PageRank to the Scopus citation network: a citation is worth more when it comes from a well-cited journal.

1. Three-year window. For year X, SCImago counts citations made in X to documents published in X−1, X−2 and X−3. The authors chose three years as the shortest window covering the citation peak of every Scopus subject area.
2. Prestige transfer. Every journal starts with the same prestige. In repeated rounds, each passes prestige to the journals it cites. SJR2 gives extra weight to citations between thematically close journals.
3. Caps on self-citation. The method limits how much prestige a journal can send to itself or to any single journal (the 2010 version capped self-citations at 33% of a journal's references), so citing yourself cannot inflate the score.
4. Size normalisation. The accumulated prestige is divided by the journal's share of citable documents (mainly articles, reviews and conference papers), so publishing more does not raise the score by itself.

SCImago's help page sums the result up as "the average number of weighted citations received in the selected year by the documents published in the selected journal in the three previous years". The same page defines an unweighted "Cites per document (2 years)", which uses the impact factor's two-year window with Scopus data.

How quartiles are assigned: per category, per year

SCImago follows the Scopus classification: 27 broad subject areas and, according to its help pages, 309 specific categories such as Oncology or Philosophy. Quartiles are calculated within the specific categories. Each year, the journals of each category are sorted by SJR and cut into quarters. In the 2025 edition, 71% of the 30,161 journals with a quartile were listed in more than one category, and each listing gets its own quartile.

Best quartile vs. quartile in your category

SCImago's downloadable ranking has a column called "SJR Best Quartile": the highest quartile a journal reaches in any of its categories. This site uses that column for the Q1–Q4 badge on each journal, and the colored category tags under each result show the quartile in every single category.

Take Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, a no-fee journal published in Germany. With an SJR of 0.647 in the 2025 edition, it was Q1 in Philosophy (where Q1 started at about 0.28), Q2 in Psychology (miscellaneous) and Q3 in Cognitive Neuroscience (where Q1 required about 1.2). Its best quartile is Q1, yet a neuroscience committee might call it a Q3 journal.

This is common. In the 2025 edition, about 8,800 journals (29% of those with a quartile) had different quartiles in different categories. And because each journal is credited with its best result, 31% of ranked journals have Q1 as their best quartile, not 25%.

SJR vs impact factor vs CiteScore vs h-index

"Q1" means little until you know which ranking is meant. The four most common journal metrics compared:

Because the databases, windows and weighting differ, the rankings often disagree: a journal can be Q1 in SCImago, Q2 in JCR, or absent from JCR if Web of Science does not index it. JCR does not rank categories made up only of arts and humanities journals by impact factor, so in those fields SCImago is often the only quartile available. The h-index, proposed by Jorge Hirsch in 2005, favours old and large journals and is not normalised by field.

When the quartile matters

Quartiles look comparable across fields, so they appear in rules for promotion, doctoral defences and research bonuses. Documented examples:

• Iraq. Ministry of Higher Education circulars, compiled in Al-Bayan University's 2024 promotions guide, award letters of thanks from 1 January 2020 for papers in Q1 or Q2 journals of Scopus (with a CiteScore) or Clarivate (with an impact factor), and a May 2020 circular set cash rewards for papers in Q1 journals. The circulars do not say whether the Scopus quartile means SJR or CiteScore.
• Morocco. Moulay Ismail University in Meknes pays publication bonuses by SCImago or JCR quartile: twice the base amount for Q1, 1.5 times for Q2, 1.25 times for Q3, the base amount for Q4 (rules adopted in July 2022).
• Algeria. In the DGRSDT journal categories, as circulated by Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi Ouzou, Web of Science journals form categories A+ and A, while journals indexed only in Scopus fall in category B, whatever their SCImago quartile. One option in a 2018 doctoral-defence rule at the École nationale supérieure d'hydraulique accepted a category-B Scopus journal only if its SJR was above 0.1 on the date of submission.

Such rules change often. Read the exact wording: which ranking, which category, which year, and whether the best quartile is enough.

The limits: what quartiles do not tell you

A quartile is based on a journal-wide average. It says little about any single paper and nothing about whether your paper fits the journal's scope. The boundaries are arbitrary too: journals just inside and just outside the top 25% are almost identical.

• The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), developed at the American Society for Cell Biology's meeting in December 2012, recommends not using journal-based metrics such as impact factors as a surrogate for the quality of individual articles or researchers, or in hiring, promotion and funding decisions. Quartiles are journal-based metrics too.
• The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (CoARA, July 2022), signed by more than 800 organisations, commits them to "abandon inappropriate uses in research assessment of journal- and publication-based metrics, in particular inappropriate uses of Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and h-index", and to rely primarily on qualitative peer review.
• The German Research Foundation (DFG) states that impact factors and h-indices are not required in publication lists and are not considered in review. France's ANR signed DORA in September 2018.

Quartiles are also misused. Clarivate warns that some journals falsely claim Web of Science coverage or an impact factor, so check quartiles on scimagojr.com or in this finder, never only on the journal's website. See our guide to predatory journals.

How to find free Q1 and Q2 journals

A high quartile does not have to come with a fee. Diamond open access journals charge neither readers nor authors (see diamond, gold and green open access). Of the 4,279 no-fee open access journals listed in SCImago, this is how their best quartiles break down (October 2026):

1. Open the journal finder. It shows no-fee journals by default, best quartile first.
2. Pick your field under Subject area, or type keywords from your topic.
3. Under Quartile, switch off Q3, Q4 and Unranked.
4. Read the category tags on each result to check the quartile in your category.
5. Confirm on scimagojr.com and with the Scopus check that the journal is still indexed.

Or browse the ready-made lists: free Q1 journals, free Scopus-indexed journals, and journals by subject area, such as medicine or social sciences. New to the topic? Start with our open access guide.

Why a journal's quartile changes from year to year

SCImago publishes one edition per year. The 2025 edition appeared on 15 April 2026 and covers 32,193 sources, including 30,412 journals. The label is the citation year: SJR 2025 counts citations made in 2025 to documents from 2022–2024. This site refreshes its SCImago data with each new edition.

A quartile can move without any change in quality: the journal's citations rise or fall, rivals improve faster, or new journals join the category. A journal near the 25% line can alternate between Q1 and Q2. Institutions also disagree on which year counts (submission, acceptance or publication), so save a PDF or screenshot of the SCImago page when you submit.

Frequently asked questions

Is a Q1 journal always better than a Q2 journal?

No. Q1 means the journal's recent papers were, on average, more cited than those of three quarters of its category. A specialised Q2 journal read by the right community may serve your paper better than a broad Q1 one.

My journal is Q1 in one category and Q3 in another. Which do I report?

What your institution asks for. If it says "in your field", use the category matching your discipline. Otherwise the best quartile is the usual convention, but name its category.

Are SCImago quartiles the same as impact factor quartiles?

No. SCImago ranks by SJR within Scopus categories; JCR ranks by impact factor within Web of Science categories. The same journal often has different quartiles in each, or a quartile in only one.

What is the difference between SJR and impact factor?

The impact factor counts every citation equally over two years and requires a JCR subscription. The SJR uses three years, weights citations by the prestige of the citing journal, limits self-citation and is free to consult.

Is a Q4 journal a predatory journal?

Not by itself. A Q4 journal is still indexed in Scopus; it may simply be young, regional or serve a small field. Judge it by its peer review, editorial board and scope.

Are there Q1 journals that charge no publication fee?

Yes. In the current data, 711 diamond open access journals have Q1 as their best SCImago quartile and 1,020 have Q2. See the list of free Q1 journals.

Sources

• SCImago, Help and About us.
• González-Pereira, Guerrero-Bote, Moya-Anegón (2010), The SJR indicator, Journal of Informetrics 4(3); preprint arXiv:0912.4141.
• Guerrero-Bote, Moya-Anegón (2012), The SJR2 indicator, Journal of Informetrics 6(4).
• SJR 2025 export via sjrdata; thresholds and shares are our own counts.
• UPV library: SJR 2025 published; 2026 JCR and CiteScore releases.
• Clarivate, JCR Reference Guide 2025 (PDF).
• Elsevier, What is CiteScore? and CiteScore metrics.
• Hirsch (2005), An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output, PNAS 102(46).
• DORA; CoARA, The Commitments and About.
• DFG, form 1.91; ANR, DORA signature.
• Al-Bayan University, promotions guide (2024); Moulay Ismail University, publication bonus rules (2022).
• UMMTO, journal categories (Annexe 4); ENSH, doctoral defence rules (2018).