The Journal Evaluation Tool

Background

Since August 2006, The Centre for Health Initiatives (CHI) has been working in conjunction with the Australia & New Zealand Council of Deans of Nursing & Midwifery to produce a new method of ranking refereed journals in which Australian and New Zealand nursing and midwifery researchers publish their work. This project was entitled “Development of a ranking of refereed journals in which Australia & New Zealand nursing and midwifery researchers publish their work”.

Throughout this project we consulted with peak nursing and midwifery bodies, utilising both a Delphi survey process and a focus group design with an ‘expert panel’. The method rests upon the idea that:

1. citation rates and impact factors, while still of importance, should not be the sole indicator of journal quality for disciplines like nursing and midwifery; and
2. nursing and midwifery researchers should dictate which factors are important when judging journal quality.

This project has resulted in the development of the Journal Evaluation Tool (JET) [pdf 70kb].

The JET has been used to provide a current ranking of refereed journals in which nurses and midwives publish. The current ranked list is available here [pdf 46kb].

Please note that some journals did not receive a ranking as part of the preliminary exercise, as they were either uncontactable or unresponsive to the call for participation. These journals are included in Band 4, but may still receive a ranking in the future by completing the steps below.

How to gain a ranking

All refereed journals in which nurses and/or midwives publish are eligible to be included in the rankings.

As ISI impact factors are changeable, new rankings and re-rankings will occur on a yearly basis, and will be posted here.

Please contact Jenny Martin (jenny.martin@deakin.edu.au) at CDNM to receive the JET.

Once the JET is completed you may submit this to Samantha Reis (sreis@uow.edu.au) at CHI for scoring and ranking.