What the three categories mean
HJRS — the HEC Journal Recognition System — sorts recognised journals into three categories. W is the highest, followed by X, then Y.
W and X journals are typically those carried in the major international databases. Y is a category HEC provides for national journals that are working toward international recognition, which is why it contains a large share of Pakistan-based titles.
A journal outside all three is not HEC-recognised. Publishing in it may not count toward requirements that specify recognition, which is the practical consequence most researchers care about.
W is highest, then X, then Y. A journal in none of the three is not recognised, whatever its own website claims.
How a journal gets its category
Assignment is not a committee opinion. HJRS computes a Journal Prestige Index from six quantitative parameters drawn from the two major international databases.
From Web of Science: Eigenfactor and Article Influence. From Scopus: SCImago Journal Rank, the journal h-index, Cites per Doc (CD2), and Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP).
Because those inputs are international bibliometric measures, HJRS category tracks a journal's standing in Scopus and Web of Science fairly closely. That is the mechanism behind a point researchers often notice: a journal's HJRS category and its international indexing are related, not independent.
Categories are not permanent
HEC republishes recognition on defined cycles, and a journal can move up, move down, or drop out of recognition entirely between them as its underlying metrics change. A recent national-journal window runs from April 2026 to December 2027.
This matters more than it sounds. The category that applied when you submitted may not be the category that applies when you publish, or when someone assesses your record years later.
So check the current list at the time you need the answer rather than relying on a category someone quoted to you, a list circulated in a departmental email, or a claim on the journal's own website. We deliberately name no journals and no categories here for exactly this reason — anything specific we wrote would be wrong within a cycle or two.