An examination of the Indonesian journal ranking system

Introduction. The study presents a thorough statistical analysis on the Science and Technology Index (SINTA), a journal ranking system established by the Indonesian Ministry of Higher Education. SINTA ranks Indonesian journals into six tiers (S1 to S6) based on scientific content and administrative compliance. The system differs from widely accepted quartile-based ranking system which ranks journal purely from citation perspective. This study assesses whether SINTA reflects journal quality when contrasted to the globally recognized citation-based indicators. Method. The H5-index and Impact Factor distributions data of 10,478 Indonesian journals spanning over ten subject areas as of November 2024 were retrieved. Statistical analysis was conducted using Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn’s pairwise tests to detect and identify statistically distinguishable ranking clusters. Analysis. The study analysed whether the six SINTA rankings (S1 – S6) corresponds to six distinct clusters when mapped out based on the H5-index and Impact Factor distributions. All analysis was performed on SPSS. Results. The analysis showed that there are at most four statistically distinguishable groups, based on the H5-index and Impact distributions, instead of six independent groups as indicated by the six SINTA rankings. A substantial portion of non-adjacent SINTA rankings exhibited indistinguishable citation distributions. In some subject areas, all six SINTA rankings showed statistically indistinguishable citation-based distributions, indicating that SINTA fails to reflect citation-based quality. Conclusions. Findings indicate that SINTA is not a reliable measure of journal quality and suggest adopting a more citation-based framework aligned with global practice.