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Guides, frequently asked questions, glossary of metrics.
Searches the guides, questions, glossary and knowledge base articles.
How to use the platform
Searching for journals and universities
Select the magnifying-glass icon in the site header and type a journal name, ISSN, or university name. Suggestions appear from the second character on and are grouped by kind: journals, universities, articles. Selecting an item takes you to its profile page.
Journal rankings
The "Journal Rankings" page lists all Kazakhstani scientific journals sorted by KZ-SJR in descending order. Use the filters to narrow results by subject area, quartile, or access type. Click any column heading to change the sort order. The set of columns is configured with the "Metrics in the table" button above the table: it carries a "shown of total" counter, and the panel it opens groups the indicators by meaning.
University rankings
The "University Rankings" page shows Kazakhstani organisations ranked by their combined bibliometric score. Filters let you select by region, institution type, or specialisation.
Journal profile
A journal profile page contains:
- General information: ISSN, subject area, language, publication frequency.
- Metrics: impact factor, CiteScore, h-index, KZ-SJR, quartile, and other indicators.
- Metric trends: charts showing how indicators have changed over the years.
- Editorial policy: review type, APC cost, COPE membership, Plan S compliance.
- Recent issues and articles.
Exporting data
Every ranking page carries two download buttons — CSV and JSON. Each takes the whole current selection, honouring the filters and the columns you configured. Excel and PDF come from the comparison page and from the report builder in your account.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to register to view rankings?
No. All rankings, profiles, and the Metrics page are available without registration. Registration is required for subscriptions, personalisation, and commenting.
How often are rankings updated?
Scheduled recalculation runs once per day during off-peak hours. While recalculation is in progress, public pages continue to show the previous values; updated data is published atomically when the recalculation completes.
Why might the figures on this platform differ from Scopus or Web of Science?
RankScience uses open data from Crossref and OpenAlex. Differences between citation databases can lead to discrepancies with proprietary systems. The RankScience methodology is described on the Metrics page.
How do I report an error in the data?
The journal or university profile carries a "Report an error in the data" button. The request enters tracking and is carried through to closure: its status, the resolution and the editors' replies are visible under "My requests" in your account, and you can answer a follow-up question in the same place.
Can I change the metric weighting?
Registered users can create their own weighting configurations in their personal account. The official public ranking is not affected.
How do I access data via the API?
RankScience provides an open API for journal, university and metric data (JSON, with filtering, sorting, pagination and per-language fields). Interactive documentation with request/response examples is available at /api/v1/docs. The endpoints are open and anonymous; an optional developer API key (header X-API-Key, issued from the admin console) raises your per-minute rate limit. The API is versioned in the URL path (/api/v1): backward-compatible changes ship within a version, and a breaking change introduces a new version while the old one keeps working.
Glossary of terms
Terms you will meet in the rankings and on profile pages. The formulas behind the indicators are on the Metrics page.
RankScience
An automated information and analytics system for ranking scientific journals, universities, and research organisations in Kazakhstan.
Impact Factor (IF)
The average number of citations received by articles published in a journal during the preceding two years. Calculated as the ratio of citations to the number of articles over the measurement period. See the Metrics page for the full formula.
h-index
The maximum number h such that h publications have each been cited at least h times. It captures both productivity and citation impact simultaneously.
Quartile (Q1–Q4)
Division of journals into four groups within a subject subfield by their final score. Q1 is the top quarter of the subfield, Q4 the bottom. The quartile follows the final score, not a single indicator: KZ-SJR feeds that score alongside the other metrics.
KZ-SJR
A Kazakhstan-adapted ranking algorithm analogous to the Scimago Journal Rank. It accounts not only for the number of citations but also for the quality of the citing source. Citations between Kazakhstani journals carry a local-impact coefficient; foreign citations, Russian ones included, count at full weight.
CiteScore
A Scopus indicator similar to the impact factor, but calculated over a three-year window.
FWCI (Field-Weighted Citation Impact)
A comparison of a publication’s citation rate against the expected level for its discipline. A value of 1.0 means “at the field average”; values above 1.0 indicate above-average citation impact.
APC (Article Processing Charge)
A publication fee charged to the author or their institution for publishing in an open-access journal.
Confidence score
A service indicator of the reliability of each data record (0–100). It is calculated from a set of rules and is used both in metric calculations and in the user interface.
Normalisation
Adjusting metric values to a common scale so that journals from different subject subfields can be compared fairly.
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