Top journals in computer science

	Journal	Papers	Citations	Citations per paper
1	IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication	1,954	23,738	12.15
2	IEEE-ACM Transactions on Networking	951	11,283	11.86
3	IBM Journal of Research and Development	548	6,190	11.30
4	IEEE Transactions on Information Theory	3,466	36,419	10.51
5	ACM Transactions on Graphics	812	7,742	9.53
6	SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing	1,290	11,588	8.98
7	IEEE Transactions on Communications	2,812	23,553	8.38
8	IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering	723	5,707	7.89
9	Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering	3,347	26,006	7.77
10	Computer Vision and Image Understanding	773	5,879	7.61
11	IEEE Communications Magazine	1,838	12,257	6.67
12	Computer-Aided Design	1,006	6,439	6.40
13	Communications of the ACM	1,797	11,037	6.14
14	Journal of Machine Learning Research	500	3,029	6.06
15	CMES: Computer Modeling in Engineering and Sciences	660	3,917	5.93
16	Computers & Chemical Engineering	2,347	13,861	5.91
17	SIAM Journal on Computing	946	5,285	5.59
18	Environmental Modelling & Software	1,120	6,009	5.37
19	IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation	3,911	20,690	5.29
20	Journal of Computer and System Sciences	701	3,621	5.17

The data above were extracted from Thomson Reuters’ Essential Science Indicators database. This database, currently covering the period January 1998 through December 2008, surveys only journal articles (original research reports and review articles) indexed by Thomson Reuters. Articles are assigned to a category based on the journals in which they were published and Thomson Reuters’ journal-to-category field-definition scheme. Both articles tabulated and citation counts to those articles are for the period indicated. Here our ranking of journals in computer science is by citations per paper to reveal weighted impact. Essential Science Indicators lists journals ranked in the top 50 per cent for a field over a given period, based on total citations. In computer science, 190 journals are listed, meaning 380 journals in this field were surveyed. Of these 190 journals, 96 published 500 or more papers during the period. This ranking of the top 20 by citation impact (citations per paper) should be recognised as distinctly different from Thomson Reuters’ impact factor rankings, which are presented in the Journal Citation Reports issued each year. The impact factor is calculated as citations in Year 3 to a journal’s contents in Years 1 and 2, divided by the number of so-called citable items (regular articles and reviews) in Years 1 and 2. Thus, the above ranking reveals longer-term impact. For more information on Thomson Reuters’ Essential Science Indicators, see http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/products/esi