Is Scimago a good way to rank conference impact?
Is Scimago a good way to rank conference impact?


No. It isn't.

At best, Scimago is a good way to obtain a modified "PageRank" of a publication in the graph of citations between Scopus-indexed publications in a three-year window, with each citation weighted by the similarity of the citing and cited publications, as measured by their common citation profiles.

Even if you accept that Scimago's abstruse formula is an accurate indicator of "impact"—which is debatable for numerous reasons—neither the raw citation data nor the precise definition of "cocitation profile" (on which the formula depends) are available to independently verify Scimago's rankings.

In particular, a few spot checks suggests that Scimago's coverage of major computer science conferences is spotty, and that the data it extracts from those conferences (even for relatively straightforward things like "number of citeable documents") is not particularly accurate.