What is a Q1 journal? Quartiles, SJR and impact factor explained
“Published in a Q1 journal” is one of the most common lines on an academic CV. The short answer: Q1 means the journal sits in the top 25% of its category by citations. The long answer depends on which list you are looking at.
How a quartile is computed
The journals in a subject category are ranked by a citation metric and cut into four: the top 25% is Q1, then Q2, Q3, Q4. So Q1 is not an absolute stamp of quality but a relative rank within a category — in a category of 40 journals, 10 are Q1.
Two lists, two quartiles
Promotion and funding rules in many countries ask for the Web of Science JCR quartile (by impact factor). SCImago (SJR) is built on Scopus data and covers more journals. The same journal can be Q2 in JCR and Q1 in SCImago — both are correct, they are different lists. Read which one your application actually asks for.
What impact factor and SJR measure
Impact factor: citations this year to what the journal published in the previous two years, divided by the number of those articles. SJR is the weighted version of the same idea — citations from prestigious journals count for more, self-citation is capped. Both are journal averages; neither says how often a single paper inside was cited.
What a Q1 journal does not tell you
A good share of the papers in a Q1 journal are rarely cited even years later, and a field-changing paper can appear in a Q3 journal. The quartile is the signal at the door; the paper’s own citation count and field-normalised impact (FWCI: 1.0 = world average) are the real measure. We showed how to read the three side by side in quality signals.
How Pofolia shows it
The quartile and SJR on every paper card come from SCImago’s public yearly list (the best quartile when a journal sits in several categories); citation counts and FWCI come from OpenAlex. So a “Q1” in Pofolia is SCImago’s Q1 — check the JCR quartile separately for a promotion file. On the field pages (psychology, say) you also see what share of a field’s most-cited papers appeared in Q1 journals.
Where to look a quartile up
- SCImago Journal Rank (scimagojr.com): search by title or ISSN; quartile and SJR per category — free.
- Web of Science JCR: through your library’s subscription; impact factor and JCR quartile live here.
- If a journal’s own site says “Q1”, look for the year and the list — a badge without a year and a category is not information.