Education journals worldwide: an analysis of the publications included in the 2016 Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

Introduction: The evaluation of scientific activity in Spain grants personal and social recognition to professors and researchers and conditions their academic career. Articles published in journals included in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), are the most necessary to achieve personal accreditation and sexennial research recognition. In this paper, the situation of the education journals currently included in both JCR (SCIE and SSCI) are analysed. Methodology: the sample contained 340 journals included in the Education & Educational Research, Special, Education and Psychology Educational subject categories in the 2016 JCR Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) edition. The distribution by countries, quartiles, language of publication and publishing institution is studied. Results: Throughout the last ten years, the number of education journals has increased in the JCR databases in all of the subject categories except in Education, Special. Only 8 countries have education journals in privileged positions (quartiles 1 and 2). The United States of America, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain are the four countries with the highest number of journals in quartiles 1 and 2. Regarding the publication language, English and Spanish are the most used languages. It is also observed that a great number of Spanish journals publish both in English and Spanish. The three Spanish journals with greater impact factor are: Comunicar, Revista de Educacion and Revista de Psicodidactica, all publish in English and Spanish. Conclusions: Therefore it is concluded, that in the case of Spanish educational journals, the publication of the works both in English and Spanish language contributes to a greater diffusion of the papers among the national and international scientific community, increasing its visibility and impact factor.