4.3.3 Searching for journals using ISSNs

It is possible to conduct a journal impact analysis using ISSNs instead of journal titles. In order to do so use the General citation search tab and include the ISSN in the field The phrase. For more information on the General Search Queries see Chapter 5.

Considerable caution is necessary in using this approach, because Google Scholar results do not seem to be identical when using the ISSN instead of journal title. For many journals the differences are only small, with the h-index generally being 1-4% lower when using ISSN searches.

However, for some journals differences are much larger: Journal of Applied Psychology for instance registers a 15% lower h-index when searching with its ISSN. Finally, for some journals (e.g. Australian Journal of Management) Google Scholar provides virtually no hits when searching with their ISSN. I would therefore not recommend using ISSNs except to exclude false hits when searching for journal titles that include common words (see next section).