Which journal indicator to consider when submitting a paper on Public Health area?

BACKGROUND: Each journal metric has a one-of-a-kind algorithm with unique strengths and limitations. This study aims to explore the correlations among the journal metrics of the Public Health, Environmental, and Occupational Health (PHEOH) journals to help inform researchers’ decisions on their publications. METHODS: We included the first 300 journals listed in the PHEOH area by SCImago. Journal Impact Factor (JIF), SCImago journal rank indicator (SJR), CiteScore (CS), h-index, and Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) indexes were obtained for every journal, between 01 August-30 September 2022. We performed bivariate Spearman ranking correlations, with SPSS 26.0. The statistical significance level was p < 0.05. RESULTS: There were very strong correlations between JIF&CiteScore (r = 0.831, p < 0.05), SJR & JIF (r = 0.817, p < 0.05), and SJR & SNIP (r = 0.829, p < 0.05). There were strong correlations between JIF & SNIP, CiteScore & SNIP, and SJR & CiteScore (r = 0.760, p < 0.05; r = 0.772, p < 0.05; r = 0.792, p < 0.05 respectively). There was a moderate correlation between the h-index and CiteScore (r = 0.414, p < 0.05); weak correlations between the h-index&JIF (r = 0.263, p < 0.05), and the h-index&SNIP (r = 0.310, p < 0.05). Among the top 50 journals, the correlations between JIF& CiteScore (r = 0.795, p < 0.05), SJR & JIF (r = 0.631, p < 0.05), and SJR&SNIP (r = 0.601, p < 0.05) were strong. Moderate correlations were found between JIF&SNIP (r = 0.593, p < 0.05), CiteScore&SNIP (r = 0.550, p < 0.05), and SJR&CiteScore (r = 0.505, p < 0.05). There were no correlations between h-index&JIF (r = 0.140, p = 0.354), h-index&CiteScore (0.194, p = 0.176), h-index&SNIP (0.055, p = 0.704), and h-index&SJR (r = 0.275, p = 0.053). CONCLUSIONS: Our study highlights that there is instability in the correlations among mentioned metrics. Journal metrics, especially the h-index, should be carefully evaluated by the researchers before submitting any manuscript to a journal in the PHEOH category. KEY MESSAGES: • Journal metrics are not highly correlated in the public health area. • Researchers should carefully consider all metrics before publication, especially h-index.