How to filter for scientific journals based on Impact Factor

Recently, I decided to write a paper that has been shelved for the past 2 years since 2015 (due to certain reasons that I shall not elaborate). That data has been available for years, just not released to anyone. Of course, it was written in LaTeX, as the text and figures could be done consistently, and simple changes implemented in the *.tex file would reformat it into a manuscript/paper for another journal, should it get rejected by the current one. Saves a lot of time on reformatting, that's for sure.

Now that the draft is more or less done, time to shop for journals to submit to, preferably the ones with highest impact factor possible. How to start? If I were to go to every journal relevant to my area of research, it would take many man hours to gather data. Luckily, I came across this particular site. The data on this site may not be updated, but it should suffice for now. 18 pages of journal titles to filter, with incomplete data on Impact Factor listed from 2011 to 2015. Still, a task that would take many man hours to do.

Fortunately, I know how to program in multiple languages, and have been learning since 2001. Thankful for having volunteered to help professors during undergraduate days. Web scraping is possible on this page, but the hours spent programming and debugging it would be unproductive. Hence, quick hack. Here are the steps (took around 1-2 hours).

1. First, load the pages from 1 to 18, and copy the data into a *.csv file. 
2. Load that *.csv file in my code, and filter out the ones that do not have a value for impact factor.
3. Set the minimum impact factor to 1.0 (just as a guide).
4. Use keywords to filter for the field of research 'combust', 'flame', 'fluid', 'measure'
5. Choose the year for data to be collected (2015 in this case).
6. Plot graphs and display list of journals against the respective impact factor (minimum of 1.0)

Did a PhD in Combustion, so these were the keywords that were relevant to that area. Can be modified based on research area, of course, and it would take almost no time to generate the results.

Here are the results for 2014/2015 Impact Factors:

Note that the Impact Factor data was presented for 2014/2015 due to the data source. The above figure shows the distribution of journals based on existing data, conditional on the impact factor more than or equal to 1.0. Note that out of the 9029 journal titles listed on the site, only 4995 had data for impact factor in 2014/2015. Out of these journals, 3874 had impact factor greater or equal to 1.0.

It can be observed that there were 33 journals relevant to the field, based on the keyword search, and 29 had impact factor more than 1.0. For a start, it would be good to choose the high impact ones first. However, a primitive search engine like the one in this quick hack could lead to irrelevant data. Hence, there is a need to see the output, which is shown below (in alphabetical order):

['Annual Review Of Fluid Mechanics', 11.163]
['Atmospheric Measurement Techniques', 2.929]
['Biomicrofluidics', 3.357]
['Combustion And Flame', 3.082]
['Combustion Theory And Modelling', 1.28]
['Computers & Fluids', 1.619]
['Environmental Fluid Mechanics', 1.297]
['European Journal Of Mechanics B-Fluids', 1.656]
['Experiments In Fluids', 1.67]
['Experimental Thermal And Fluid Science', 1.99]
['Flow Turbulence And Combustion', 1.519]
['Fluid Phase Equilibria', 2.2]
['Geofluids', 2.046]
['Geophysical And Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics', 1.062]
['Ieee Transactions On Instrumentation And Measurement', 1.79]
['International Journal Of Heat And Fluid Flow', 1.596]
['International Journal For Numerical Methods In Fluids', 1.244]
['Journal Of Fluid Mechanics', 2.383]
['Journal Of Fluids And Structures', 2.021]
['Journal of Mathematical Fluid Mechanics', 1.186]
['Journal Of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics', 1.821]
['Journal Of Supercritical Fluids', 2.371]
['Measurement Science & Technology', 1.433]
['Microfluidics and Nanofluidics', 2.528]
['Proceedings Of The Combustion Institute', 2.262]
['Physics Of Fluids', 2.031]
['Physiological Measurement', 1.808]
['Progress In Energy And Combustion Science', 19.22]
['Theoretical And Computational Fluid Dynamics', 1.8]

Note that the review journals have high impact factor (e.g. Progress In Energy And Combustion Science, Annual Review Of Fluid Mechanics) but there is no point submitting to these as the paper isn't a review paper. Hence, Combustion And Flame.

Do feel free to contact me if you need help on choosing journals to submit to, or with programming.