Applied sciences: Methodology

The journal scores are calculated by aggregating the scores of the respondents regardless of their discipline. The respondent scores are the weighted scores according to the respondent’s demographics and the preferred ordering of the nominated journals (see section Weighting).

After the aggregation of the scores, the journal shortlists are created with the following rules:

1. Ranked by weighted score.

2. Minimum of 10 votes as a journal the author wants to publish their best work in.

3. Cumulative sum of included articles in the discipline by % of articles or number of articles, then journal list is cut off. (3% of all primary research articles in discipline.)

4. No one journal can have more than 15% of the total articles in a discipline.

5. Journals shortlisted must have a votes per discipline article ratio of at least 0.01 for Applied Sciences and at least 0.02 for Natural, Health and Social Sciences.

ANZSRC fields of research codes were linked to Nature Index disciplines to allow for the categorisation of researchers and journals. All first-level codes are linked to a single discipline with the exception of Mathematical Sciences. Mathematical Sciences sits under Applied Sciences or Natural Sciences according to the second-level field of research.

Applied Sciences

• Agricultural, Veterinary and Food Sciences
• Built Environment and Design
• Information and Computing Science
• Engineering
• Mathematical Sciences: Statistics, Numerical and Computational Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Pure Mathematics, Other Mathematical Sciences

Natural Sciences

• Biological Sciences
• Chemical Sciences
• Physical Sciences
• Mathematical Sciences: Mathematical Physics
• Environmental Sciences
• Earth Sciences

Health Sciences

• Health Sciences
• Biomedical and Clinical Sciences
• Psychology

Humanities and Social Sciences

• Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services
• Creative Arts and Writing
• Economics
• Education
• History, Heritage and Archaeology
• Human Society
• Language, Communication and Culture
• Law and Legal Studies
• Philosophy and Religious Studies
• Indigenous Studies

Collect a minimum of 20 responses for each group of researchers, split by:

• Collect a minimum of 20 responses for each group of researchers, split by:
  • Applied Sciences
  • Natural Sciences
  • Health Sciences
  • Humanities and Social Sciences
• Area:
  • EU
  • APAC
  • North America
  • Global South
• Number of publications in the last 5 years:
  • Between 2-10
  • Between 11-20
  • More than 20
• Gender:
  • Male
  • Female

Researchers with more than one publication in the last five or more years.

The author discipline is defined based on the level-1 and level-2 citation topics the author publishes the most in. See the mappings from citation topic to discipline in section Field of research to discipline.

The area is defined from the current GRID country of the author. Mapping of continent to area:

The publication volume is calculated as the number of publications in Dimensions associated with the researcher id of the author from 2019 to mid-2024. Inferred gender is based on the first name of the author with gender-guesser. Mapping of output values:

For the first wave of results, we randomly sampled researchers from our contacts database. Since some groups did not have a minimum of 20 responses, a second survey was sent out which targeted these groups. The needed number of researchers to contact was adjusted for the response rate of the group from the first wave.

In order to represent the target populations across the three dimensions: area, publication volume and gender, weights were calculated to adjust for any differences between the ratios in the sample for each discipline.

The following self-reported metadata was used for the respondents:

• Main field of research (citation topics)
• Country
  Area was mapped from country in the same way as in Area.
• Publication volume in the last 5 years
• Gender
  • Male
  • Female
  • Prefer not to disclose
  • Non-binary or gender diverse
  • Self-describe in this comment field

Only male/female responses were weighted, since there is no information about the other values for the target population.

Weights for area, publications and gender-guesser gender were calculated, based on the difference between the sample total and the target total for researchers for whom we have email addresses. For gender-guesser gender, the weights were calculated for three groups: male, female and unknown, since 40% of the researchers in the target population could not have their gender inferred, i.e. had a value of “unknown”. Apart from the adjustment for gender-guesser gender, the self-reported values for the other dimensions, area and publication volume, were used to calculate the sample totals.

Non-response here is assumed to be based on the same dimensions (discipline, area, publication volume, gender).

In order to account for coverage error, i.e. differences in the representation of the target groups beyond the researchers with emails, weights were calculated for area and publication volume, as well as self-reported gender.

Iterative proportional fitting was used to aggregate the known rations for a) area and publication volume, and b) gender. Dimensions data was used to calculate the totals for a), while for b) Elsevier’s report was used. The subject fields used there were mapped onto ANZSRC codes, and an average of the reported female active authors shares was taken. The active author share was adjusted for these fields where it was not reported by averaging over the reported ones for the respective discipline.

Additionally to making the scores representative, weighting was done on the journal level for each response in order to reflect the reported preferred order. The used multiplier was calculated as the difference between the maximum number of preferences (6) and the reported order of the journal.

Proposed discipline

Citation topics levels 1 and 2 were used to determine the discipline of a journal article. These levels correspond to ANZSRC fields of research which were mapped to disciplines as shown here. The aggregated volumes per journal for the past five years or more determined the disciplines that journal falls into. The top 1 discipline is always assigned to the journal. The top 1 discipline is always assigned to the journal. If the top 2 or top 3 have 25% or more volume, they are assigned as well. Citable volume for 2023 is calculated for each proposed discipline of the journals.

Proposed subjects

A proposed “subject” is the FoR L-1 under the specific discipline. All subjects which are part of the proposed disciplines are surfaced, together with their citable volume for 2023.