Search each box by a whole word from the journal's title, then pick from the list. The comparison reads their indexed record — speed, reach, the risk of going uncited, how much of the impact figure is self-generated, scale, and what opening a paper is worth — and says what each is better for, rather than declaring one better.
If you intend to publish open access, read the If you publish open access group. A journal where open articles are cited well above its paywalled ones can be the better home for a paper you are opening even when it trails on the headline figures.
These measures are field-relative: a leading mathematics journal has a lower 2-year impact than a middling one in cell biology. Two journals from different subjects can be put side by side, but not honestly ranked against each other. Where that is the case the page says so and drops the verdict.
Reading the chart
The chart summarises the measures below that have a direction. Further out is better on every spoke.
Speed — median days from submission to publication over the last three years. Further out is a faster journal. Impact — the 2-year impact: citations in the last two years per citable item. Depth — the peer-reviewed h-index, which describes the depth of the journal's cited record rather than its recent average. Cited — the opposite of the uncited share: further out means less of the journal's output is never cited at all, so a lower chance a paper goes unread. Independence — the opposite of self-citation: further out means less of the headline impact figure is generated by the journal citing itself. Integrity — the opposite of the retraction rate: further out means fewer retraction notices per 1,000 articles. Open boost — how much more an open-access article is cited than a paywalled one published the same year in the same journal. Further out means opening a paper here is associated with more citations. This spoke appears only when both journals have enough years holding articles of both kinds; on most pairs the chart has six spokes rather than seven.
Rows in the table that describe a journal without ranking it — volume, subject breadth, open access and data availability — are deliberately not on the chart: a shape can only be read as "further out is better" if every spoke agrees which way better is.
