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What is Journal Impact Factor?
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Daunted by the idea of choosing the right journal for your paper? Don’t be. Metrics have become an everyday word in scholarship, in general. Within its many fields of research – if not all of them – they provide important data about a journal’s impact and relevance among its readers. In an era of information proliferation, it has become increasingly important to know where to capture the most attention and interest of your target audience.
So, whenever you are in doubt about which journal suits you better, don’t forget to browse its metrics; they will certainly help you with the decision-making process. Start, for example, with the Journal Impact Factor.
Impact factor (IF) is a measure of the number of times an average paper in a journal is cited, during a year. Clarivate Analytics releases the Journal Impact Factors annually as part of the Web of Science Journal Citation Reports®. Only journals listed in the Science Citation Index Expanded® (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index® (SSCI) receive an Impact Factor.
What is a good impact factor for a scientific journal?
Impact Factors are used to measure the importance of a journal by calculating the number of times selected articles are cited within a particular year. Hence, the higher the number of citations or articles coming from a particular journal, or impact factor, the higher it is ranked. IF is also a powerful tool if you want to compare journals in the subject category.
Measuring a Journal Impact Factor:
- CiteScore metrics – helps to measure journal citation impact. Free, comprehensive, transparent and current metrics calculated using data from Scopus®, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature.
- SJR – or SCImago Journal Rank, is based on the concept of a transfer of prestige between journals via their citation links.
- SNIP – or Source Normalized Impact per Paper, is a sophisticated metric that accounts for field-specific differences in citation practices.
- JIF – or Journal Impact Factor is calculated by Clarivate Analytics as the average of the sum of the citations received in a given year to a journal’s previous two years of publications, divided by the sum of “citable” publications in the previous two years.
- H-index – Although originally conceived as an author-level metric, the H -index has been being applied to higher-order aggregations of research publications, including journals.
Deciding the perfect journal for your paper is an important step. Metrics are excellent tools to guide you through the process. However, we also recommend you not neglect a perfectly written text, not only scientific and grammatically but also fitting the chosen journal’s requirements and scope. At Elsevier, we provide text-editing services that aim to amend and adjust your manuscript, to increase its chances of a successful acceptance by your target journal. Although each journal has its own editorial team, the overall quality, language and whether the article is innovative may also play a role.
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Journal impact factors
Announcing the latest impact factors.
The journal impact factor (JIF), as calculated by Clarivate Analytics, is a measure of the average number of times articles from a two-year time frame have been cited in a given year, according to citations captured in the Web of Science database.
The 2023 JIF (released in 2024), for example, was calculated as follows:
A = the number of times articles which published in 2021–2022 were cited in indexed journals during 2023
B = the total number of research and review articles from the journal published in 2021–2022
2023 JIF = A/B
This listing includes only journals that have a 2023 JIF. For a full list of journals published by APA, please visit the Journals homepage to browse our portfolio by title or subject.
| Journal Title | 2023 JIF | 2023 5-Year JIF | Journal Citation Reports Subject Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.3 | 3.8 | ||
| 12.3 | 16.2 | ||
| 2.4 | 2.9 | ||
| 1.6 | 2.0 | ||
| 1.3 | 2.4 | ||
| 1.1 | 1.5 | ||
| 2.9 | 4.2 | ||
| 1.2 | -- | ||
| 4.7 | 7.8 | ||
| 0.9 | -- | ||
| 1.9 | 1.8 | ||
| 3.2 | 3.8 | ||
| 1.0 | -- | ||
| 3.1 | 5.0 | ||
| 0.8 | 1.6 | ||
| 3.4 | 4.5 | ||
| 1.1 | -- | ||
| 2.4 | 2.6 | ||
| 1.2 | 1.9 | ||
| 1.8 | 2.4 | ||
| 3.1 | 4.9 | ||
| 1.1 | 0.8 | ||
| 2.1 | 4.4 | ||
| 9.4 | 11.8 | ||
| 2.8 | 4.7 | ||
| 1.1 | 1.6 | ||
| 4.5 | 6.3 | ||
| 3.8 | 5.5 | ||
| 2.5 | 3.1 | ||
| 5.6 | 6.7 | ||
| 1.2 | 1.4 | ||
| 2.7 | 3.0 | ||
| 3.7 | 4.7 | ||
| 2.1 | 2.6 | ||
| 2.2 | 2.9 | ||
| 2.3 | 3.3 | ||
| 2.1 | 2.6 | ||
| 0.6 | 0.9 | ||
| 1.6 | 1.3 | ||
| 5.9 | 11.7 | ||
| 6.4 | 9.2 | ||
| 3.1 | 7.8 | ||
| 1.8 | 2.6 | ||
| 1.0 | 1.7 | ||
| 2.4 | 3.2 | ||
| 3.0 | -- | ||
| 2.6 | 3.1 | ||
| 0.9 | 1.4 | ||
| 3.0 | 3.5 | ||
| 1.5 | 2.0 | ||
| 1.8 | 2.3 | ||
| 1.0 | 1.2 | ||
| 3.3 | 4.9 | ||
| 17.3 | 30.3 | ||
| 7.6 | 11.5 | ||
| 5.1 | 8.0 | ||
| 1.9 | 2.9 | ||
| 2.7 | 5.6 | ||
| 3.7 | 3.8 | ||
| 3.2 | 3.7 | ||
| 2.7 | 4.9 | ||
| 1.4 | -- | ||
| 2.7 | 3.0 | ||
| 2.1 | 3.0 | ||
| 2.2 | 2.9 | ||
| 3.6 | -- | ||
| 2.4 | 4.1 | ||
| 2.3 | 2.4 | ||
| 0.6 | -- | ||
| 2.6 | 4.6 | ||
| 11.7 | -- | ||
| 1.9 | 3.2 | ||
| 3.9 | 3.2 | ||
| 1.4 | 1.7 | ||
| 2.7 | -- | ||
| 1.8 | 2.2 | ||
| 1.9 | -- | ||
| 2.3 | -- |
Following the release of the 2023 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) from Clarivate Analytics, APA Publishing is pleased to report that Journal Impact Factors (JIFs) have been assigned to 89% (79) of our titles. Among our ranked journals, 24% are in the top 10 of their categories and 46% are in their category’s top quartile.
Notably, 15 APA-published journals indexed in Clarivate’s Emerging Sources Citation Index received their first-ever category rankings this year, including:
- Qualitative Psychology (11.7 JIF; ranked 7 of 218 in Multidisciplinary Psychology; published on behalf of The Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology, a section of APA Division 5 )
- Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice (1.9 JIF; ranked 24 of 66 in Family Studies; published on behalf of APA Division 43: Society for Couple and Family Psychology )
- Stigma and Health (2.7 JIF; ranked 27 of 76 in Social Psychology and 136 of 403 in Public, Environmental, & Occupational Health)
- Translational Issues in Psychological Science (1.9 JIF; ranked 47 of 92 in Psychology and 92 of 218 in Multidisciplinary Psychology)
- Traumatology (2.3 JIF; ranked 70 of 180 in Clinical Psychology, 73 of 218 in Multidisciplinary Psychology, and 131 of 276 in Psychiatry; published on behalf of the Green Cross Academy of Traumatology )
Twenty APA-published titles saw an increase in their JIF, and 31 journals rose in rank within their category. Twenty-six journals rose in quartile within their category. Some examples include the following:
- Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics saw a 129% increase in its JIF, rising from 0.7 to 1.6 and jumping in rank from 135th to 109th in the Multidisciplinary Psychology category (and from 344th to 273rd in the Economics category)
- History of Psychology saw a 120% increase in its JIF, rising from 0.5 to 1.1 and jumping in rank from 140th to 132nd in the Multidisciplinary Psychology category (and from 27th to 10th in the History of Social Sciences category).
- Asian American Journal of Psychology , published on behalf of the Asian American Psychological Association, saw a 60% increase in its JIF, rising from 1.5 to 2.4 and jumping in rank from 104th to 65th in the Multidisciplinary Psychology category (and from 13th to 6th in the Ethnic Studies category).
Other portfolio highlights:
- APA publishes 4 journals in the top 10 of the large and diverse Psychology, Multidisciplinary category: Psychological Bulletin (ranking 3rd out of 218 journals, 17.3 JIF), American Psychologist (ranking 6th, 12.3 JIF), Qualitative Psychology (ranking 7th, 11.7 JIF; published on behalf of The Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology, a Section of APA Division 5), and Psychological Methods (ranking 10th, 7.6 JIF).
- Five more APA journals are ranked in the top quartile of the Psychology, Multidisciplinary category: Psychological Review (ranking 19th, 5.1 JIF), Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (ranking 27th, 3.6 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 44: Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity ), Psychology of Addictive Behaviors (ranking 39th, 3.2 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 50: Society of Addiction Psychology ), Motivation Science (ranking 44th, 3.0 JIF, published on behalf of Society for the Science of Motivation ), and Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne (ranking 46th, 2.9 JIF; published on behalf of the Canadian Psychological Association ).
- Psychological Bulletin remains the journal with the highest JIF in APA’s portfolio (17.3 JIF). In addition to ranking 3rd out of the 218 journals in the Psychology, Multidisciplinary category, it also ranks 3rd out of the 92 journals in the Psychology category.
- Two APA journals rank in the top 20 of the Psychology, Applied category: Journal of Applied Psychology (ranking 3rd, 9.4 JIF) and Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (ranking 12th, 5.9 JIF). Journal of Applied Psychology earned the most all-time citations (51,849) in this 113-journal category.
- Psychoanalytic Psychology (1.0 JIF), published on behalf of APA Division 39: Division of Psychoanalysis , ranks 4th of the 13 titles in the Psychology, Psychoanalysis category, marking over a decade in the category’s top quartile.
- Four APA titles rank in the top 25 of the Psychology, Experimental category: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (ranking 9th of 99, 3.7 JIF), Emotion (ranking 12th, 3.4 JIF), Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (ranked 23rd, 2.8 JIF; published on behalf of Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition), and Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (ranking 25th, 2.7 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 10: Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts ).
- Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology ranks 3rd for all-time citations (20,413) in the 180-journal Psychology, Clinical category.
Six APA titles rank in the top quartile of that category, including Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice (ranking 13th, 4.7 JIF; published on behalf of APA Division 12: Society of Clinical Psychology ), Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (ranking 17th, 4.5 JIF), and Health Psychology (ranking 36th, 3.1 JIF, published on behalf of APA Division 38: Society for Health Psychology ).
Four APA titles rank in the top 25 of the Psychology, Educational category: Journal of Educational Psychology (ranking 3rd out of 74, 5.6 JIF), Journal of Counseling Psychology (ranking 11th, 3.8 JIF), School Psychology (ranking 5th, 3.9 JIF, the journal’s highest rank and JIF to date; published on behalf of APA Division 16: School Psychology ), and Journal of Diversity in Higher Education (ranking 24th, 2.5 JIF; published on behalf of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education ).
Journal of Educational Psychology received a total of 20,586 citations, the second highest in the category.
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (6.4 JIF) again earned the most all-time citations (79,644) in the competitive Psychology, Social category and ranked 4th of 76 journals, marking over a decade as one of the top 5 journals in this category.
Showcasing the breadth and depth of our program, journals published by APA are also highly ranked in 23 categories related to psychology found in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Science Citation Index Expanded. Some examples include the following:
- Humanities, Multidisciplinary : Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (2.7 JIF), published on behalf of APA Division 10: Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, is ranked number 2 out of the 146 journals in the Humanities, Multidisciplinary category.
- Ethnic Studies : Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology (3.2 JIF), published on behalf of APA Division 45: Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race , retained its number 1 ranking out of the 39 journals in the growing Ethnic Studies category. We are proud to see this journal as the established go-to source for research on critical societal issues.
- Religion : Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (2.2 JIF), published on behalf of APA Division 36: Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality , is ranked 4th out of the 339 journals in Religion , a category in Clarivate’s Arts and Humanities Citation Index.
- Social Work : American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (2.3 JIF), published on behalf of the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice , ranks 8th out of the 91 titles in the expanding Social Work category.
- Rehabilitation : Two APA journals indexed in the Rehabilitation category remain in the category’s top two quartiles: Rehabilitation Psychology (ranking 56th out of 73, 1.9 JIF) and Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal (ranking 66th, 1.8 JIF).
- Communication : Psychology of Popular Media (2.1 JIF) is ranked 59th out of the 227 journals in the Communication category.
- Criminology & Penology : Psychological Violence (2.4 JIF) remains in the top quartile of the Criminology & Penology category, ranking 14th out of 113.
- Law: The two APA journals listed in the Law category remain in the category’s top 10% by JIF. Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law (2.3 JIF) is ranked 24 of 421 journals. Law and Human Behavior (2.4 JIF), published on behalf of APA Division 41: American Psychology-Law Society, is ranked 20th of 421 in the Law category, putting it in the top 5% of Law journals.
- Management : Journal of Applied Psychology (9.4 JIF) remains in the top quartile of the competitive Management category, ranking 14th out of 401 journals. The journal also has the highest total citations in the category (51,849).
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The Journal Impact Factor (sometimes abbreviated to JIF or IF) is a metric that has been in use for decades. Initially created as a tool to help librarians decide which journals to subscribe to, it has changed over the years to be used in a variety of ways.
While some scholars still use the JIF to drive publication decisions, the many limitations of this metric mean that it is important not to use it as a proxy for the quality of an individual research output or for an individual researcher's contributions.
Impact Factor
- Transcript - Impact factor Download video transcript as a .txt file
Impact Factor: Your Questions Answered
What does the impact factor measure? The Journal Impact Factor measures the frequency with which the “average article” in a journal has been cited in the last two years. As such, it may help reflect the importance of a journal in its field.
How is the impact factor calculated? The Journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR year. The Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years. An Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two year ago have been cited one time. Citing articles may be from the same journal; most citing articles are from different journals. More details as well as graphical representations are available via Clarivate.
Who produces the impact factor? The Journal Impact Factor is calculated every year in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database . JCR has been releasing impact factor data annually since 1975. The criteria and calculations used to calculate the metric have changed over time.
Do all journals have an impact factor? No. Journals indexed in the databases Science Citation Index Expanded or the Social Sciences Citation Index receive a Journal Impact Factor. Inclusion in these databases is competitive and require journals to meet certain criteria .
Just because a journal does not have an impact factor, does not mean that it is of low quality or low impact in its field.
Journals can be removed from the JCR database for a number of reasons, including unethical behaviour .
Is there more than one metric for measuring journal impact? As a new academic author, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the number of metrics promoted by various publishers! There are a number of other metrics that purport to measure the impact of journals; however, the Journal Impact Factor continues to be the most influential. Other journal impact metrics include:
- Cite Score : This metric is similar to the Journal Impact factor, but uses a slightly different calculation (e.g. a four year time period rather than two), and is produced by a different company. Can be found in the Scopus database.
- Eigenfactor : This metric is intended to give a measure of how likely a journal is to be used, and is thought to reflect how frequently an average researcher would access content from that journal.
- Source Normalized Impact Factor (SNIP) : This metric measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field. The impact of a single citation is given higher value in subject areas where citations are less likely, and vice versa. As such, SNIP is meant to correct for differences in citation practices between various fields, thereby allowing for more accurate between-field comparisons of citation impact. Also found in the Scopus database.
Is impact factor important in my discipline? Use of the impact factor to drive publication decisions is very field specific. Talk to your advisor, mentors, and peers to find out if this metric, or any others, are important in your discipline. At an institutional level, the University of Calgary signed on to the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) in 2021. DORA explicitly guides against using the impact factor in decisions relating to funding, appointment, and promotion .
What is a "good" impact factor? This is a very difficult question to answer! The numerical value of impact factors varies greatly between disciplines and even sub-disciplines, due to different publishing and citing patterns. You can take a look at how journals are ranked by discipline by performing a subject search in Journal Citation Reports . This will help you understand what high impact journals in a particular field are.
What are some criticisms of the impact factor? There is a large body of research pointing to the flaws and inappropriate uses of the impact factor and other research metrics. Some key criticisms include:
- Citation distributions within journals are highly skewed: for example, one "blockbuster" paper or highly cited item such as a review can artificially inflate the metric.
- Journal Impact Factors can be manipulated (or “gamed”) by editorial policy. For example, editors may encourage prospective authors to cite other items published in the same journal.
- Data used to calculate the Journal Impact Factors are neither transparent nor openly available to the public.
Unless otherwise noted, content is this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .
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Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other Metrics: Measuring Your Impact
- Measuring Your Impact
- Citation Analysis
- Find Your H-Index
- Other Metrics/ Altmetrics
- Journal Impact Factor (IF)
- Selecting Publication Venues
How to Measure your Impact PPT
- How to measure your impact. Feel free to use this power point and change it as you need it. Please however give credit to me (Sandra De Groote) as part of your document or powerpoint.
About the H-index
The h-index is an index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output ( J.E. Hirsch ) The h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the scientific productivity and the apparent scientific impact of a scientist. The index is based on the set of the researcher's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other people's publications ( Wikipedia ) A scientist has index h if h of [his/her] Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have at most h citations each.
Find your h-index at:
- Web of Science
- Google Scholar
Ways to Measure Impact
There are various tools and methods upon which to measure the impact of an individual or their scholarship.
- There are several databases (Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar) that will provide an h-index for an individual based on publications indexed in the tools.
- Find about more about these tools and how to use them by clicking the Find Your H-index tab.
- UIC has access to a number of resources that identify cited works including: Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar.
- F ind about more about these tools and how to use them by clicking the Citation Analysis tab.
- Find out more about Altmetrics and tools for obtaining altmetrics data, click on the Other Metrics/ Altmetrics tab.
- Find out more about the impact factor and tools that measure/ rank journals within specific disciplines, click the Journal Impact Factor tab.
About Citation Analysis
What is Citation Analysis?
The process whereby the impact or "quality" of an article is assessed by counting the number of times other authors mention it in their work.
Citation analysis invovles counting the number of times an article is cited by other works to measure the impact of a publicaton or author. The caviat however, there is no single citation analysis tools that collects all publications and their cited references. For a thorough analysis of the impact of an author or a publication, one needs to look in multiple databases to find all possible cited references. A number of resources are available at UIC that identify cited works including: Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and other databases with limited citation data.
Citation Analysis - Why use it?
To find out how much impact a particular article or author has had, by showing which other authors cited the work within their own papers. The H-Index is one specific method utilizing citation analysis to determine an individuals impact.
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About Journal Impact
Impact Factor - What is it?; Why use it?
The impact factor (IF) is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. It is used to measure the importance or rank of a journal by calculating the times its articles are cited.
How Impact Factor is Calculated?
The calculation is based on a two-year period and involves dividing the number of times articles were cited by the number of articles that are citable.
Calculation of 2010 IF of a journal:
- Next: Citation Analysis >>
- Last Updated: Jun 14, 2024 1:10 PM
- URL: https://researchguides.uic.edu/if
Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
The average number of times articles from a journal published in the past two years have been cited in the Journal Citations Report (JCR) year.
When to Use It
Journal impact: Though not a strict mathematical average, the Journal Impact Factor provides a functional approximation of the mean citation rate per citable item.
How It's Calculated
(Total number of citations from JCR year to items in “year -2” + citations from JCR year to items in “year -1”) ÷ (total number of citable items in “year -2” + citable items in “year -1”) = Journal Impact Factor
The Journal Impact Factor takes into account the outbound cited references from any of the five journal and proceedings indexes in Web of Science (Web of Science):
- Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)
- Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
- Arts & Humanities Citation Index
- Conference Proceedings Citation Index, Science edition
- Conference Proceedings Citation Index, Social Science and Humanities edition
- For each title in SCIE or SSCI (only these two indexes get JIFs), the citations it earns (among the outbound citations measured), are collected and summed.
This collection and summation takes into account the year of publication for (a) the outbound citation (=JCR year) and for (b) the item that has been cited. The Journal Impact Factor is restricted to a two-year window of interest for cited item publication year: one year prior to the JCR year (= year -1) and two years prior to the JCR year (= year -2).
For example, in the 2015 JCR, each Journal Impact Factor will measure the citations earned by a publication where the citing year is 2015, and the cited year is either 2013 or 2014.
Also, because the Journal Impact Factor is ultimately a ratio of citations earned (in the given window) to citable items published (in the same window) by a publication, a count must be made of all the items published (and of the subset deemed to be “citable”) in that publication during that window. In the ratio, the number of citations earned is the numerator. The number of citable items is the denominator.
The value of the denominator is restricted to the same window of time as the numerator (i.e., year -1 and year -2). Any item assigned the document type “Article” or “Review” (in Web of Science) is included in the denominator. An item with any other document type is excluded from the denominator.
The citing works may be articles published in the same journal. However, most citing works are from different journals, proceedings, or books indexed in Web of Science.
The venue for measuring these data points is the Web of Science production database. This database is constantly ingesting new data, and old data are regularly corrected or updated. This degree of flux makes producing a metric like the JIF difficult because the data inputs are liable to change from minute to minute. As a result, the JCR team fixes a date (usually in the spring of the year following the JCR year) when they take an indelible “snapshot” of the database. This is JCR extraction, and it is from this extract that all JCR metrics are calculated.
How to Interpret It
A Journal Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited one time. A Journal Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited 2.5 times.
Complementary Indicators
- Journal Impact Factor Without Self Cites
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Journal Metrics
Dora: the san francisco declaration on research assessment.
Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). Because small numbers of highly cited articles can have outsized influence on certain citation measures like the 2-year Journal Impact Factor (JIF) (see below for definition), Springer Nature believes that these citation measures are not necessarily measures of journal quality, and that authors and readers should consider a range of metrics when evaluating journals to read and publish in.
Article metrics such as number of downloads, citations and online attention are available from each article page, and provide an overview of the attention received by a paper.
Citation Impact 2023
- Journal Impact Factor: 50.5
- 5-year Journal Impact Factor: 54.4
- Immediacy Index: 13.2
- Eigenfactor® Score: 1.02480
- Article Influence Score: 24.7
- Submission to first editorial decision (median days): 7
- Submission to acceptance (median days): 268
- Downloads: 152,606,039
- Altmetric mentions: 1,253,174
Definitions
The metric definitions below are shared by all Springer Nature journals.
Citation Impact
Journal impact factor.
The Journal Impact Factor is defined as all citations to the journal in the current JCR year to items published in the previous two years, divided by the total number of scholarly items (these comprise articles, reviews, and proceedings papers) published in the journal in the previous two years. Though not a strict mathematical average, the Journal Impact Factor provides a functional approximation of the mean citation rate per citable item. A Journal Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited one time. A Journal Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited two and a half times. The citing works may be articles published in the same journal. However, most citing works are from different journals, proceedings, or books indexed in Web of Science Core Collection. (Source: Clarivate Analytics )
5-year Journal Impact Factor
The 5-year journal Impact Factor, available from 2007 onward, is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the five previous years. (Source: Clarivate Analytics )
Immediacy Index
The Immediacy Index is the average number of times an article is cited in the year it is published. The journal Immediacy Index indicates how quickly articles in a journal are cited. The aggregate Immediacy Index indicates how quickly articles in a subject category are cited. The Immediacy Index is calculated by dividing the number of citations to articles published in a given year by the number of articles published in that year. Because it is a per-article average, the Immediacy Index tends to discount the advantage of large journals over small ones. However, frequently issued journals may have an advantage because an article published early in the year has a better chance of being cited than one published later in the year. Many publications that publish infrequently or late in the year have low Immediacy Indexes. For comparing journals specializing in cutting-edge research, the immediacy index can provide a useful perspective. (Source: Clarivate Analytics )
Eigenfactor® Score
The Eigenfactor Score calculation is based on the number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year, but it also considers which journals have contributed these citations so that highly cited journals will influence the network more than lesser cited journals. References from one article in a journal to another article from the same journal are removed, so that Eigenfactor Scores are not influenced by journal self-citation. (Source: Clarivate Analytics )
Article Influence Score
The Article Influence Score determines the average influence of a journal's articles over the first five years after publication. It is calculated by multiplying the Eigenfactor Score by 0.01 and dividing by the number of articles in the journal, normalized as a fraction of all articles in all publications. This measure is roughly analogous to the 5-Year Journal Impact Factor in that it is a ratio of a journal’s citation influence to the size of the journal’s article contribution over a period of five years. (Source: Clarivate Analytics )
Submission to first editorial decision
This measures the median time in days from when the journal receives a manuscript submission to when the submission is either sent out for peer review or rejected.
Submission to acceptance
This measures the median time in days from when the journal receives a manuscript submission to when the submission is accepted. This includes all peer review and can also include time in revision.
Downloads reflect the number of times full text or PDF versions of articles are accessed directly from the journal website and Springer Link. Downloads are defined as HTML, LookInside, PDF, and Epub clicks. Please note that this does not include article downloads from mirror databases such as PubMed Central. These download counts comply with the COUNTER5 standard. COUNTER5 is the fifth iteration of the “Code of Practice,” from Counter Metrics , which is a not-for-profit organization financially sustained by its global community of members, including libraries, consortia, publishers, aggregators, and technology providers.
Altmetric mentions
Total number of mentions (e.g. X, Facebook, Reddit, Blogs, News articles, Policy documents, and Faculty of 1000 reviews) for articles published in the specified timeframe, as provided by Altmetric .
Quick links
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Measuring your research impact: Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
Getting Started
Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
Eigenfactor and Article Influence
Scimago Journal and Country Rank
Google Scholar Metrics
Web of Science Citation Tools
Google Scholar Citations
PLoS Article-Level Metrics
Publish or Perish
- Author disambiguation
- Broadening your impact
Table of Contents
Author Impact
Journal Impact
Tracking and Measuring Your Impact
Author Disambiguation
Broadening Your Impact
Ranking journals in JCR
Journal Citation Reports (or JCR) is a product of Clarivate Analytics and is an authoritative resource for impact factor data. This database provides impact factors and rankings of many journals in the social and life sciences based on millions of citations. It offers numerous sorting options including impact factor, total cites, total articles, and immediacy index. In addition, JCR provides a five-year impact factor and visualized trend data.
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Introduction to Impact Factor and Other Research Metrics
- Types of Metrics
- Impact Factor
- Identifying Journals
- More Resources
What are the different metrics?
Scholars have combined standard research metrics, like scholarly output and citation counts, into formulas to measure and assess author and journal impact in new ways. Some of these metrics include:
- Journal Impact Factor
- Eigenfactor score
- Altmetrics (alternative metrics)
On this page you will learn what these metrics measure, how to calculate these metrics, and databases and resources to look up each metric in.
Calculating bibliometrics
Calculating metrics can sometimes be complicated and confusing. This table provides a brief introduction to each calculation and what it means.
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| Use a two-year period to divide the number of times articles were cited by the number of articles that were published Example: = the number of times articles published in 2018 and 2019 were cited by indexed journals during 2020. = the total number of "citable items" published in 2018 and 2019.
2020 impact factor |
Impact factor reflects only on how many citations on a specific journal there are (on average). |
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, | 1) Create a list of all of your publications. organize articles in descending order, based on the number of times they have been cited. 2) Look down through the list to figure out at what point the number of times a publication has been cited is equal to or larger than the line (or paper) number of the publication.
*please remember that many databases will give you this number; this is only if you'd like to calculate it manually. You can also often find calculators online. *graphic courtesy of the |
The h-index focuses more specifically on the impact of only one scholar instead of an entire journal. The higher the h-index, the more scholarly output a researcher has. |
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Given a list of articles ranked in decreasing order of the number citations that they received, the g-index is the largest unique number to the extent that the top g articles received together is at least g citations. | The g-index can be thought of as a continuation of the h-index. The difference is that . The g-index was created because scholars noticed that h-index ignores the number of citations to each individual article beyond what is needed to achieve a certain h-index. This number often complements the h-index and isn't necessarily a replacement. |
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| The Eigenfactor score is calculated by eigenfactor.org. However, their process is very similar to calculating impact factor and they pull their data from the JCR as well. The major difference is that the Eigenfactor score deletes references from one article in a journal to another in the same journal. This eliminates the problem of self-citing. The Eigenfactor score is also a five-year calculation. More information can be found in the . |
. It's useful to look at scholar's h-index as the Eigenfactor score of the journals they publish in in order to get a broad sense of their impact as a researcher. |
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Altmetric scores are usually calculated by companies. This means that they can't be calculated manually. | Different sources go into altmetrics calculations, depending on the company and the information that they are using. But in general, (i.e. a news post might be more valuable than a twitter mention). Remember that attention doesn't necessarily indicate that the article is important or even of quality. That's why it's useful to use altmetrics and traditional research metrics together. |
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- URL: https://guides.library.illinois.edu/impact
Reference management. Clean and simple.
What is a good impact factor?
What is an impact factor?
How is an impact factor calculated, how to find the impact factor of a journal, frequently asked questions about impact factors, related articles.
An impact factor measures the average number of a journal's citations in a two-year period. Ultimately, this measure calculates the rank of the journal in question. The more citations a journal has, the higher ranked it is. With higher ranking comes more popularity, and most importantly, credibility.
The calculation of the impact factor of a journal is quite easy. The number of citations of a journal is divided by the number of citable articles (from the same journal) from a two-year period.
X= the number of times articles published in 2018 and 2019 were cited by indexed journals during 2020
Y= the total number of published (citable) articles in 2018 and 2019
X/Y= 2020 impact factor of a journal
Usually, the impact factor of a journal is measured by different entities. You can find a journal's impact factor by referring to the Journal Citations Report (JCR), Scopus , or Resurchify . You only need to type in the title, publisher’s name, ISSN, or search by subject category.
It’s worth highlighting that the impact factor is used to compare journals from the same fields. A history journal cannot be compared to a science journal. Therefore, there is no set impact factor number considered to be ideal since each field has a different measurement. In general, an impact factor of 10 or higher is considered remarkable, while 3 is good, and the average score is less than 1.
The very prestigious journal Nature had an impact factor of 69.504 in the year 2021.
➡️ Learn more: What is a good h-index?
An impact factor measures the average number of a journal's citations, in a two-year period. Ultimately, this measure calculates the rank of the journal in question.
The number of citations of a journal is divided by the number of citable articles (from the same journal) from a two year period.
X= the number of cited articles from 2018 and 2019 in 2020
Y= the number of published articles in 2018 and 2019
You can find a journal's impact factor by referring to the Journal Citations Report (JCR) or Scopus .
In general, an impact factor of 10 or higher is considered remarkable, while 3 is good, and the average score is less than 1.
Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), invented the measurement known as impact factor. You can read more about this in Origins of the journal impact factor .
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Measures of Impact for Journals, Articles, and Authors
Elizabeth m suelzer.
1 Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI USA
Jeffrey L. Jackson
2 Zablocki VA Medical Center, Milwaukee, WI USA
Journals and authors hope the work they do is important and influential. Over time, a number of measures have been developed to measure author and journal impact. These impact factor instruments are expanding and can be difficult to understand. The varying measures provide different perspectives and have varying strengths and weaknesses. A complete picture of impact for individual researchers and journals requires using multiple measures and does not fully capture all aspects of influence. There are only a few players in the scholarly publishing world that collect data on article citations: Clarivate Analytics, Elsevier, and Google Scholar (Table (Table1). 1 ). Measures of influence for authors and journals based on article citations use one of these sources and may vary slightly because of differing journal coverage.
Citation Databases
| Organization | Product | Years | Platform | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elsevier | Scopus | 1970–present | SCImago | Contains citation information from over 39,000 journals; continually adding older content; covers 240 academic disciplines; requires subscription |
| Clarivate | Web of Science | 1900–present | Journal Citation Report | Contains citation information from over 21,100 journals; covers over 250 academic disciplines; requires subscription |
| Google Scholar | Not provided | Google Scholar | Freely accessible product of Google; collects citation and reference information using web crawlers that roam through websites containing scholarly information. |
Individual Authors
Researchers make contributions to their fields in many ways: through education, advocacy, mentorship, collaboration, reviewing grants and articles, editorial activities, and leadership. For better or worse, their impact is usually based on the number of research articles they publish and how often those articles are cited. Some activities, such as writing editorials for leading journals, book chapters, or other clinical texts; testifying before Congress; or helping to shape government or health system policy, can be highly influential, but not credited in these measures of influence.
A common problem authors have in determining their impact is duplicate names, either from being inconsistent in the name they use (e.g., Jackson JL vs Jackson J) or name changes. There are several ways to establish a persistent and unique digital identifier. Researchers should take advantage of all.
ORCID ( www.orcid.org )
Many funders require an ORCID identifier as part of grant submission. ORCID is free, and all authors can sign up to create a unique identifier. ORCID does not track measures of impact, but cooperates with other sites that do by maintaining a list of publications that authors can review for completeness and accuracy.
ResearcherID ( www.researcherid.com )
This site provides a unique identifier and pulls information from Web of Science (Clarivate) to generate an h -index. It has a dashboard that generates a Web of Science author impact plot, provides authors a year-by-year report on impact, and generates a “citation” map that shows the location of citations. ResearcherID is also used by Publons, another Clarivate product, that tracks peer review and editorial activity. Access requires a subscription.
Scopus and Web of Science
Scopus and Web of Science are independent sites that create unique identifiers for authors based on proprietary software. Identifiers are automatically assigned and may result in the creation of more than one identifier, particularly if authors have had multiple affiliations, have a common name, have changed names, or have been inconsistent in their name. Authors can review the identifiers assigned and merge different listings. Access to these databases requires a subscription.
In addition, authors can create a Google Scholar account, which will also track and assess author impact. Google Scholar is free. Authors should regularly review their account to make sure their article list is accurate.
Measures of Impact for Authors
There are a number of different measures of individual author impact; each has strengths and weaknesses (Table (Table2). 2 ). All are limited in that they do not account for author effort and order. Most can be skewed by self-citation and favor those who have been publishing longer. 2
Author Measures of Influence
| Measure | How calculated | Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|---|
| -index | Number of articles ( ) that have been cited times | Easy to calculate Combines quality/quantity | Skewed by self-citation Does not account for author order or effort Biased against early-career authors |
| -index | Sum citations of top articles and take the square root and round | Easy to calculate Combines quality/quantity | Skewed by self-citation Does not account for author order or effort Biased against early-career authors Highly influenced by high-impact articles |
| i-10-index | Number of articles that have been cited at least 10 times | Easy to calculate Combines quality/quantity | Favors productivity over quality Does not account for author order Biased against early-career authors Ten citations are an arbitrary cut-point |
| iCite | Field and time adjusted and benchmarked against median for NIH–funded publications | Provides a benchmark Not biased against early-career authors | Difficult to calculate Highly influenced by high-impact articles |
| Altmetrics | Weighted measure based on 15 sources | Accumulates quickly Provides measure of societal/cultural interest Provides a different perspective on article/author influence than citations | May not predict importance Not predictive of citations Evolving measures Reflects “popular” topics Can be gamed by using “popular” terms in title Uncertain how to use measures |
| PlumX analytics | Provides metrics in 5 categories: citations, usage, captures, mentions and social media. |
H-Index , developed by Jorge E. Hirsch in 2005, is defined as the number of published papers that have been cited at least h times. 3 An h -index of 40 means th.e author has 40 articles cited at least 40 times. This simple metric is widely used for evaluating an authors’ impact. Citation databases like Web of Science, Scopus (Elsevier), and Google Scholar provide h -index information in their author profiles, though the reported h -index may vary due to citation coverage. The h -index favors authors that publish a continuous stream of papers with persistent, above-average impact. It measures the cumulative impact of an author’s work and combines quantity and quality. However, it does not account for the author effort and order, is biased against early-career researchers with fewer publications, and can be skewed by self-citation.
G-Index , created in 2006 by Leo Egghe, is defined as the largest number such that the top “ g ” articles received together at least g 2 citations. 4 This metric favors highly cited articles; a single highly cited article will increase the g -index considerably, while only increasing the h -index by 1.
i-10-Index , calculated by Google Scholar, is a straightforward metric that shows the number of publications with at least 10 citations.
Measures of Impact for Individual Articles
This is an NIH dashboard of bibliometrics for articles. iCite has three modules: Influence, Translation, and Open Citations. Influence is based on a relative citation ratio (RCR), comparing article citations to the median for NIH–funded publications, the value of which is set at 1.0. Among NIH–funded studies, the 90 th percentile for RCR is 3.81. Among all studies, the 90 th percentile is 2.24. Individual paper influence is reported and can be used to select manuscripts that best represent one’s work. Translation provides a measure of translation from bench to bedside by breaking down whether most of the author’s publications are molecular/cellular, animal, or human. Citations provide a count of the total citations and give citation statistics (mean, median, SE, maximum) as well as a list of the citing articles for each paper.
Alternative measures of influence
There are measures of influence of individual articles that are not based on citations. They provide a snapshot of article impact in a number of alternate venues, such as public policy documents, news articles, blogs, and social media.
Altmetric tracks more than 15 different sources, including public policy documents, news articles, blog posts, mentions in syllabi, reference managers, and social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. The results are weighted; some sources, such as news articles, get greater weight. For example, in 2020, the weights of the various sources were news stories: 8, blogs: 5, Q&A forums: 2.5, Twitter: 1, Google: 1, and Facebook: 0.25. Altmetrics can be displayed as a “badge,” a symbol with a number in the middle of a circle with the strands colored to reflect the elements that went into the score. Researchers can sign up to create an altmetric badge for their articles ( www.altmetric.com ). To create a badge, the article must have a DOI number. Altmetrics for any specific article reflects popular interest in the topic rather than scientific importance. At JGIM, article altmetrics do not correlate with citations. Altmetrics can accumulate quickly; many metrics, such as Twitter and Facebook mentions, tend to occur within days of publication, while citations can take years. Altmetrics can be applied to scholarly products other than research publications, such as curricula and software. However, altmetrics can be gamed; “popular” topics tend to get more play than others. It is still unclear how to use altmetrics; most rank and tenure committees do not include these measures in promotion deliberations.
PlumX Analytics
PlumX gathers metrics into 5 categories: citations, usage, captures, mentions, and social media. Citations include traditional citations as well as ones that may have societal impact, such as policy documents. Usage measures views, downloads, and measures of how often the article is read. Captures indicate that a reader is planning on coming back to the article; it can indicate future citations. Mentions refer to news articles, blog posts, and other public mentions of the paper. PlumX Social Media refers to tweets and Facebook likes and shares, among several sources. It provides a picture of how much public attention articles are getting. PlumX analytics suffer from the same issues as altmetrics and citations. PlumX analytics are embedded in several platforms, including Mendeley, Science Direct, and Scopus and on many open-access journal platforms.
Measures of Impact for Journals
Historically, there were many reasons why certain journals rose to the top: highly respected editors, a long publishing history, and a track record of influential work policy makers and clinicians cared about. In 1975, Thompson Reuters debuted SCI Journal Citation Reports , ranking journals based on article citations. 5 Subsequently, this has been the primary basis for journal prestige.
Journal evaluation metrics that use citation data favor some disciplines over others. Disciplines vary widely in the amount of research output, the number of citations that are normally included in papers, and the tendency of a discipline to cite recent articles. 6 For example, Acta Poetica focuses on literary criticism. Its impact factor would be a poor measure of the journal’s influence. In addition, one needs to consider where the evaluation tool is collecting their data. Databases like Web of Science and Scopus may have stronger coverage of some disciplines, impacting the citation metrics that are generated. 6
Some resources assign journals to subject categories, making it possible to compare journals within their discipline. A good analogy is points scored in sporting events. Seven points in American football is a poor offensive outing, while 7 points in European football is a juggernaut. Comparing journals within the same discipline provides better information about the journal’s relative importance.
Journal Citation Reports
Journal Impact Factor (JIF). This is published annually by Clarivate and uses citation data from Web of Science. It has been the “gold standard” for measuring journal impact since its creation. 7 Journal editors nervously await release of their impact factor every summer. The JIF is calculated by dividing the total number of citations in the previous 2 years by the number of “source” articles published the following year. JGIM had 2810 citations in 2020 for articles published in 2018 and 2019; 548 of these articles were categorized as source material. Dividing 2810/548 yields our 2020 impact factor of 5.128. Not everything journals publish is considered source material. Clarivate does not provide guidance to journals on how they decide what types of material to count. In general, letters and editorials are not included. JGIM falls in the Medicine, General & Internal and the Health Care Sciences & Services categories, ranking 27 th and 11 th , respectively, in each. Seeking high JIF has led some journals to reduce the number of articles they publish, increase the amount of non-source papers, and focus on work they believe will be highly cited. The JIF is also susceptible to journal self-citation.
Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) is a normalized metric that debuted in 2021; a score of 1.0 means that journal articles were cited on average the same as other journals in that category. 8 JGIM has a JCI of 1.48 (Table (Table3), 3 ), meaning we have a 48% more citation impact than other journals in our category. Based on the JCI, JGIM ranks 23 rd in Medicine, General & Internal and 15 th in Health Care Sciences & Services.
Journal Measures of Impact
| Measure | JGIM score | How calculated | Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Impact factor | 5.13 | Number of citations in a given year to articles published in the previous 2 years, divided by the number of source articles | Easy to calculate Combines quality/quantity | Can be gamed by journals Not a measure of quality Not all citation types are counted Skewed by journal self-citation Clarivate is vague about criteria for articles to be counted as source articles Not all journals have an impact factor Favors journals that publish systematic reviews |
| Citation indicator | 1.48 | Normalizes the impact factor compared to other journals in that category | Gives a context for a specific journal Combines quality/quantity | |
| 5-year impact factor | 6.07 | Average number of citations over 5 years, divided by the number of source articles | Easy to calculate Combines quality/quantity Provides a measure of how long article influence is sustained | |
| Immediacy index | 1.86 | Number of citations occurring in the same year of publication | Easy to calculate Combines quality/quantity Provides information on how quickly research is incorporated | |
| Eigenfactor | 0.029 | Number of journal article citations over 5 years, factoring in the impact factor of the citing journal | Freely available Takes into account quality of journal citing article Covers 5 years Excludes journal self-citations | Assigns journals to 1 category. Difficult to interpret. Similar to raw citation counts. 5 years may be too long Favors disciplines with high-impact journals |
| Normalized eigenfactor score | 6.07 | Normalizes the eigenfactor score so that the mean is 1.0 | Normalized Same as eigenfactor | |
| Influence score | 2.58 | Calculated by multiplying the eigenfactor by 0.01, dividing by the number of articles in the journal, normalized a mean of 1.0 | Provides measure of influence Normalized Same as eigenfactor | |
| CiteScore | 4.9 | Calculated by dividing the number of citations to documents (articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters, and data papers) over 4 years by the number of articles published by the journal during the index year | Longer time allows time for citations to occur Sources are transparent Updated monthly | |
| Scimago journal rank | 1.75 | Citations of articles in 1 year to articles over 3 years, weighted by the prestige of the citing journals | Updated annually | Favors fields with high-impact journals Susceptible to self-citation |
| Source normalized impact per paper | 1.47 | Measures actual citations relative to citations expected for the field | Normalized | Favors journals that publish more review articles Not as reliable for journals that publish fewer articles Sensitive to outliers |
| Scimago -index | 180 | Number of cited articles at least times in past 5 years | Easy to calculate. Combines volume/quality | Includes self-citations Favors established researchers |
| H-5 index | 65 | Number of cited articles at least times in past 5 years | Easy to calculate |
* Source articles: articles that are counted in the denominator
5-Year Impact Factor is the average number of times articles published in the previous 5 years were cited in the indexed year. It gives information on the sustained influence of journal publications. JGIM’s 2020 score was 6.070, meaning that articles published in 2014–2019 were cited an average of 6 times in 2020.
Immediacy Index is the number of citations that occur in the year of publication. Journals with high immediacy index scores are rapidly cited. JGIM has a score of 1.861. This measure has been criticized for penalizing articles published later in the year.
Eigenfactor Score , a metric created in 2007 by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West of the University of Washington, is based on the number of times articles from a journal over the past 5 years have been cited in the indexed year and gives citations in highly cited journals more weight than lesser cited ones. Self-citations by the journal are excluded. JGIM’s 2020 eigenfactor score was 0.02895. This measure suffers from being difficult to understand.
The Normalized Eigenfactor Score provides a normalized metric of the Eigenfactor Score, setting a score of 1 as the average for all journals. Like the Eigenfactor Score, citations that come from highly cited journals carry more weight than citations from less cited journals and journal self-citations are excluded. JGIM’s score is 6.07, meaning that JGIM was sixfold more influential than the average journal in the Web of Science database.
Article Influence . This measure is calculated by dividing the Eigenfactor Score by the number of a journal’s articles over the first 5 years after publication. It is calculated by multiplying the Eigenfactor Score by 0.01 and dividing by the number of articles in the journal, then normalized as a fraction of all articles in all publications, such that the mean is 1.0. JGIM’s most recent influence score is 2.579. This indicates that JGIM is more than twice as influential as the average journal.
CiteScore is calculated by dividing the number of citations from documents (articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters, and data papers) over the previous 4 years by the number of articles indexed in Scopus published by the journal during those years. JGIM’s CiteScore is 4.6. Cite scores are calculated on a monthly basis. Among 122 internal medicine journals, JGIM is ranked 40 th by the CiteScore.
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) also uses Scopus data and weights citations according to the prestige of the citing journal, taking into account the thematic closeness of the citing and cited journals. 9 It is calculated based on citations in 1 year to articles published in the previous 3 years. JGIM’s SJR is 1.746, which puts us 13 th on the list of “internal medicine” journals.
SCImago H-Index calculates the number of journal articles ( h ) that have been cited at least h times. It is the same calculation used to evaluate authors; SCImago calculates the journal h -index using Scopus citation data. JGIM has an h -index of 180, meaning that 180 of our articles have been cited more than 180 times. The h -index measures the productivity and impact of journal publications.
Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) compares each journal’s citations per article with the citations expected in its field. It allows a comparison of the journal’s impact across fields, because it adjusts for the likelihood of journal articles in that field being cited. JGIM’s SNIP is 1.471 which ranks us as 23 rd among 112 internal medicine journals.
Google Scholar
H5-index. Google Scholar calculates an H5-index for journals, which is the number of articles in the last 5 years with at least h citations. Google Scholar classifies JGIM as a primary care health journal. JGIM has an H5-index of 65, making it the top-ranked journal in this category. Google Scholar does not make available the citation sources; consequently, it is difficult to tell how complete the data is.
Journal Altmetrics
Like individual articles, altmetrics can be generated for journals. They have the same advantages and disadvantages as individual article altmetrics. In 2020, JGIM had 2.5 million downloads, 61 k linkouts, and 33 k social media mentions. Journal editors may have a poor understanding of altmetrics and struggle to know what to do with the data. Altimetrics reflect popular interest. For example, in 2020, the COVID pandemic captured public interest; articles focused on aspects of the pandemic received considerable public attention. For JGIM, the top altimetric article examined the impact of masking on preventing the spread of COVID and had an altmetric score of 4829.
JGIM is interested in these measures to ensure that we (like our authors) are having an impact. However, we are not obsessed on these measures and will continue to put forward what feels most important and relevant for academic general internists.
Declarations
The authors had no conflicts of interest with this article.
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Scholarly Impact and Citation Analysis
- More Information
- Google Scholar
- Scopus: Citation Analysis for an Article or an Author
- WOS: Citation Analysis for an Author
- WOS: Finding Citing References for an Article
- Analyzing Journals Using JCR
- Analyzing Journals using Scopus
- Journal Impact Factor: What is it?
- Google Scholar Metrics
- Citation Count for Books
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Journal Impact Factor--What is it?
Journal Impact Factor
An offshoot of citation analysis is Journal Impact Factor (JIF) which is used to sort or rank journals by their relative importance. The underlying assumption behind Impact Factors (IF) is that journals with high IF publish articles that are cited more often than journals with lower IF.
Impact factors may be used by:
- Authors to decide where to submit an article for publication.
- Libraries to make collection development decisions
- Academic departments to assess academic productivity
- Academic departments to make decisions on promotion and tenure.
Where to find Journal Impact Factors?
The most notable source for journal impact factors is the annual publication called the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by Thomson Scientific.
How is the Journal Impact Factor Calculated?
Thomson defines impact factor as, “The journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR year. The Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years. An Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two year ago have been cited one time. An Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published one or two year ago have been cited two and a half times. Citing articles may be from the same journal; most citing articles are from different journals.”
A journal's impact factor for 2008 would be calculated by taking the number of citations in 2008 to articles that were published in 2007 and 2006 and dividing that number by the total number of articles published in that same journal in 2007 and 2006.Below is how Thomson calculated the 2008 impact factor for the journal Academy of Management Review :
Thus, the Impact Factor of 6.125 for the journal, Academy of Management Review for 2008 indicates that on average, the articles published in this journal in the past two years have been cited about 6.125 times.
Factors to Consider While Consulting Impact Factors:
Publication Date : The impact factor is based on citation frequency of articles from a journal in their first few years of publication. This does not serve well the journals with articles that get cited over a longer period of time (let's say, 10 years) rather than immediately. In other words, journals in rapidly expanding fields such as cell biology and computing tend to have much higher immediate citation rates leading to higher IFs than journals in fields like Education or Economics.
Journal Impact Factor not Article Impact Factor: Citations to articles in a journal are not evenly distributed. In fact, some articles in a journal may not be cited at all but a few highly cited articles could lead to a high IF. Therefore, the IF does not accurately reflect the quality of individual articles published in a journal. Also, journals with more issues and articles can have higher Impact Factors which could be misleading as it does not really reflect the quality of articles.
Review Articles: Review articles (which tend to receive more citations), editorials, letters, and news items are not counted in article total but if cited are counted as citations for the journal. This leaves room for manipulation of ratio used to calculate impact factors leading to inflated impact factors in some cases.
Clinical Journals: Clinical journals usually have low citation counts. This puts such journals at a disadvantage with research journals in the field that have higher citation counts.
Uneven Coverage : The Journal Citation Reports focuses much more on disciplines where the primary means of publishing is through journal article. It provides less coverage to areas in Social Sciences and Humanities, where books and other publishing formats are more prevalent.
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| Title | Type | --> | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | journal | 106.094 Q1 | 211 | 49 | 124 | 4844 | 35427 | 89 | 381.89 | 98.86 | 43.95 | ||
| 2 | journal | 37.044 Q1 | 39 | 3 | 13 | 897 | 955 | 13 | 100.11 | 299.00 | 27.78 | ||
| 3 | journal | 35.910 Q1 | 508 | 123 | 336 | 11462 | 13599 | 153 | 34.50 | 93.19 | 29.41 | ||
| 4 | journal | 30.448 Q1 | 306 | 47 | 136 | 3645 | 2240 | 136 | 11.14 | 77.55 | 26.67 | ||
| 5 | journal | 26.837 Q1 | 505 | 105 | 304 | 10805 | 10951 | 163 | 31.23 | 102.90 | 44.33 | ||
| 6 | journal | 24.342 Q1 | 892 | 439 | 1496 | 32820 | 53447 | 1207 | 31.30 | 74.76 | 40.19 | ||
| 7 | journal | 22.399 Q1 | 391 | 239 | 731 | 8584 | 13091 | 153 | 19.72 | 35.92 | 34.15 | ||
| 8 | journal | 22.344 Q1 | 359 | 95 | 353 | 6242 | 4811 | 351 | 10.33 | 65.71 | 23.89 | ||
| 9 | journal | 21.836 Q1 | 184 | 117 | 335 | 8842 | 13775 | 196 | 31.17 | 75.57 | 26.86 | ||
| 10 | journal | 21.048 Q1 | 217 | 127 | 400 | 9888 | 10807 | 183 | 28.36 | 77.86 | 38.85 | ||
| 11 | journal | 20.544 Q1 | 1184 | 1388 | 4522 | 14603 | 107246 | 1824 | 21.69 | 10.52 | 38.26 | ||
| 12 | journal | 19.139 Q1 | 352 | 83 | 227 | 5043 | 1938 | 221 | 7.00 | 60.76 | 16.91 | ||
| 13 | journal | 19.045 Q1 | 630 | 595 | 1363 | 16478 | 36243 | 729 | 27.23 | 27.69 | 43.99 | ||
| 14 | journal | 18.663 Q1 | 71 | 0 | 19 | 0 | 963 | 19 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | ||
| 15 | journal | 18.587 Q1 | 23 | 11 | 16 | 0 | 802 | 16 | 47.57 | 0.00 | 81.69 | ||
| 16 | journal | 18.530 Q1 | 215 | 83 | 261 | 4493 | 2531 | 258 | 7.04 | 54.13 | 17.80 | ||
| 17 | journal | 18.509 Q1 | 1391 | 3770 | 8037 | 74917 | 160102 | 3840 | 19.40 | 19.87 | 38.12 | ||
| 18 | journal | 18.117 Q1 | 511 | 485 | 1066 | 13393 | 17008 | 461 | 13.24 | 27.61 | 35.19 | ||
| 19 | journal | 17.828 Q1 | 833 | 271 | 851 | 115878 | 50519 | 819 | 49.76 | 427.59 | 30.50 | ||
| 20 | journal | 17.701 Q1 | 223 | 75 | 273 | 3371 | 1946 | 268 | 6.24 | 44.95 | 13.84 | ||
| 21 | journal | 17.654 Q1 | 234 | 108 | 410 | 6448 | 4495 | 409 | 8.04 | 59.70 | 16.43 | ||
| 22 | journal | 17.507 Q1 | 398 | 178 | 590 | 11546 | 12604 | 360 | 19.83 | 64.87 | 41.91 | ||
| 23 | journal | 17.497 Q1 | 229 | 229 | 609 | 6629 | 16808 | 379 | 26.18 | 28.95 | 29.53 | ||
| 24 | journal | 17.300 Q1 | 639 | 336 | 654 | 13672 | 13100 | 504 | 19.88 | 40.69 | 37.01 | ||
| 25 | journal | 16.061 Q1 | 388 | 36 | 103 | 14097 | 4303 | 99 | 42.66 | 391.58 | 14.94 | ||
| 26 | journal | 16.009 Q1 | 467 | 169 | 540 | 11148 | 13815 | 304 | 23.17 | 65.96 | 36.44 | ||
| 27 | journal | 15.966 Q1 | 264 | 102 | 252 | 19168 | 11266 | 244 | 38.64 | 187.92 | 24.30 | ||
| 28 | journal | 15.827 Q1 | 140 | 106 | 297 | 4359 | 4041 | 62 | 12.99 | 41.12 | 41.35 | ||
| 29 | journal | 15.620 Q1 | 328 | 23 | 84 | 4178 | 2696 | 83 | 27.02 | 181.65 | 40.68 | ||
| 30 | journal | 14.943 Q1 | 115 | 16 | 42 | 403 | 896 | 41 | 24.10 | 25.19 | 77.78 | ||
| 31 | journal | 14.796 Q1 | 388 | 400 | 978 | 11477 | 15900 | 588 | 17.52 | 28.69 | 33.83 | ||
| 32 | journal | 14.780 Q1 | 123 | 0 | 13 | 0 | 374 | 11 | 12.56 | 0.00 | 0.00 | ||
| 33 | journal | 14.707 Q1 | 32 | 46 | 35 | 4815 | 2160 | 34 | 61.71 | 104.67 | 36.44 | ||
| 34 | journal | 14.618 Q1 | 160 | 70 | 247 | 587 | 5353 | 230 | 21.11 | 8.39 | 58.79 | ||
| 35 | journal | 14.605 Q1 | 109 | 23 | 72 | 5797 | 1938 | 70 | 14.90 | 252.04 | 45.57 | ||
| 36 | journal | 14.577 Q1 | 419 | 262 | 637 | 10044 | 17562 | 466 | 27.42 | 38.34 | 28.93 | ||
| 37 | journal | 14.293 Q1 | 421 | 123 | 346 | 10202 | 6211 | 207 | 17.40 | 82.94 | 32.86 | ||
| 38 | journal | 14.231 Q1 | 558 | 306 | 834 | 9499 | 20730 | 593 | 24.08 | 31.04 | 24.85 | ||
| 39 | journal | 14.175 Q1 | 210 | 28 | 92 | 3163 | 1260 | 86 | 10.59 | 112.96 | 42.59 | ||
| 40 | journal | 13.942 Q1 | 294 | 144 | 670 | 5180 | 12698 | 362 | 18.81 | 35.97 | 39.02 | ||
| 41 | book series | 13.670 Q1 | 210 | 14 | 42 | 3772 | 1271 | 39 | 23.96 | 269.43 | 26.09 | ||
| 42 | journal | 13.655 Q1 | 311 | 89 | 563 | 4857 | 6315 | 559 | 11.14 | 54.57 | 23.11 | ||
| 43 | journal | 13.609 Q1 | 165 | 93 | 250 | 5332 | 1699 | 250 | 6.02 | 57.33 | 15.88 | ||
| 44 | journal | 13.578 Q1 | 455 | 233 | 688 | 15608 | 13409 | 550 | 16.89 | 66.99 | 40.35 | ||
| 45 | journal | 13.315 Q1 | 136 | 180 | 471 | 6682 | 12109 | 368 | 24.27 | 37.12 | 26.28 | ||
| 46 | journal | 13.080 Q1 | 260 | 243 | 827 | 1865 | 14374 | 679 | 16.58 | 7.67 | 62.53 | ||
| 47 | journal | 12.511 Q1 | 635 | 252 | 983 | 61439 | 44032 | 979 | 38.71 | 243.81 | 32.40 | ||
| 48 | journal | 12.324 Q1 | 81 | 55 | 137 | 2838 | 862 | 137 | 6.20 | 51.60 | 17.36 | ||
| 49 | journal | 12.294 Q1 | 46 | 62 | 154 | 8174 | 4174 | 86 | 27.10 | 131.84 | 31.14 | ||
| 50 | journal | 12.288 Q1 | 44 | 60 | 79 | 4858 | 3323 | 78 | 42.06 | 80.97 | 33.06 |
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Answered By: Clara Fowler Last Updated: Aug 29, 2024 Views: 101097
Impact factors are used to measure the importance of a journal by calculating the number of times selected articles are cited within the last few years. The higher the impact factor, the more highly ranked the journal. It is one tool you can use to compare journals in a subject category.
Impact Factors for scientific journals can be found in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database , which is available from the Research Medical Library. You can view all journals at once, search for a specific journal title or choose a group of journals by subject area. Sort journal lists by impact factor by selecting Journal Impact Factor above your search results.
Please note that Journal Impact Factors are released annually around the month of July. The 2023 release of Journal Citation Reports extends the Journal Impact Factor to all 21,522 Web of Science Core Collection™ journals, including those indexed in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index™ (AHCI) and the multidisciplinary Emerging Sources Citation Index™ (ESCI) for the first time. Those journals meet rigorous selection criteria for Web of Science Core Collection inclusion. See JCR 2023 Statistics.
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Where do I find the Impact Factor of a journal?
The journal Impact Factor is an index that measures how often a journal's articles are cited in other research. This is calculated by the number of citations received by articles published in that journal during the two preceding years, divided by the total number of articles published in that journal during the two preceding years. You can find the journal Impact Factor on the journal homepage.
Follow these steps to find the Impact Factor of a journal:
- Go to the journal's homepage .
For more information on journal metrics, please visit the Measuring a journal's impact page from our website .
If there is no Impact Factor available for your journal, it's likely that it's new within the last 2 years and so the data aren't available yet
To determine if this is the case for your journal, you can find out how long a journal has been publishing for on ScienceDirect:
- Go to ScienceDirect.com
- Start typing the name of the journal into the search field ‘Journal/book title’, as you start typing titles will be suggested. When the title of your journal appears, click on it then click the magnifying glass to search.
- On the search results page, click the title of the journal.
- You are now on the journal’s publication page, where you can see its previous Volumes listed on the left-hand page. Check the dates against these volumes to determine the journal’s years of publication.
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Scopus Metrics
Show more influence and attention to your research than you have ever been able to show before. Scopus metrics are a comprehensive, trustworthy and transparent way to demonstrate your journal, article, author and institutional influence.
Subscribe to Scopus and access metrics
Journal-level metrics
CiteScore™ metrics : Introduced in 2016, a family of eight indicators to analyze the publication influence of serial titles. CiteScore metrics offer more robust, timely and accurate indicators of a serial title’s impact.
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) : A prestige metric for journals, book series and conference proceedings that weights the value of a citation based on the subject field, quality and reputation of the source.
Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) : Measures contextual citation impact by taking differences in disciplinary characteristics into account; can be used to compare journals in different fields.
Source details screen web results at Scopus.com.
Article-level metrics
Four Scopus-specific metrics can be found on a document’s metrics details page : total number of citations by a date range of the user’s choosing, citations per year for a range, citation benchmarking (percentile) and Field-weighted Citation Impact. We've also recently added a new metric — views count — so users can understand usage at a glance.
PlumX Metrics : Also found on a document’s metrics details page, five comprehensive, item-level metrics that provide insights into the ways people interact with individual pieces of research output (articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and many more) in the online environment.
Author metrics
h -index and h -graph : View a researcher's performance based on career publications as measured by the lifetime number of citations that each published article receives; h -indices indicate a balance between productivity (scholarly output) and citation influence (citation count).
Citation overview tracker : An adjustable date-range table that includes the number of times each document has been cited per publication year.
Visual analysis tools : Analyze an author’s output with a collection of in-depth tools designed to provide a clearer picture of an individual’s publication history (up to 15 years) and influence: total number of cited documents, total number of citations per year, and a list of documents with numbers of citing documents and links to citing documents per year and per article.
Learn more about CiteScore metrics, a suite of eight metrics that tell a richer story about research and researcher influence.
Our Research Metrics Guidebook provides facts about how data underlying the metrics in Scopus (and SciVal) are used, how the metrics are calculated and displayed, and how variables besides performance can affect the metrics.
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COMMENTS
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science.. As a journal-level metric, it is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its ...
The impact factor (IF) is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. It is used to measure the importance or rank of a journal by calculating the times its articles are cited. ... Reliability of journal impact factor rankings. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 7(48), 48. Howard, J ...
SNIP - or Source Normalized Impact per Paper, is a sophisticated metric that accounts for field-specific differences in citation practices. JIF - or Journal Impact Factor is calculated by Clarivate Analytics as the average of the sum of the citations received in a given year to a journal's previous two years of publications, divided by ...
from Clarivate Analytics, APA Publishing is pleased to report that Journal Impact Factors (JIFs) have been assigned to 89% (79) of our titles. Among our ranked journals, 24% are in the top 10 of their categories and 46% are in their category's top quartile. Twenty APA-published titles saw an increase in their JIF, and 31 journals rose in rank ...
Journal Impact Factor (JIF) Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is calculated by Clarivate Analytics as the average of the sum of the citations received in a given year to a journal's previous two years of publications (linked to the journal, but not necessarily to specific publications) divided by the sum of "citable" publications in the previous two years.
Impact factor is commonly used to evaluate the relative importance of a journal within its field and to measure the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a particular time period. Journal which publishes more review articles will get highest IFs. Journals with higher IFs believed to be more important than ...
There is a large body of research pointing to the flaws and inappropriate uses of the impact factor and other research metrics. Some key criticisms include: Citation distributions within journals are highly skewed: for example, one "blockbuster" paper or highly cited item such as a review can artificially inflate the metric.
Overview of h-index, Eigenfactor, Impact Factor (IF), Journal Citation Reports, Citation Analysis, and other tools. ... The h-index is an index to quantify an individual's scientific research output ... The index is based on the set of the researcher's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other people ...
Impact factor, or Journal Impact Factor, is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" published in a given scholarly journal has been cited in a particular year or period and is often used to measure or describe the importance of a particular journal to its field.Impact factor was originally developed by Eugene Garfield, the founder of Institute of Scientific Information ...
The Journal Impact Factor takes into account the outbound cited references from any of the five journal and proceedings indexes in Web of Science (Web of Science): For each title in SCIE or SSCI (only these two indexes get JIFs), the citations it earns (among the outbound citations measured), are collected and summed.
A Journal Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited two and a half times. The citing works may be articles published in the same journal.
You can check Impact Factor of Journals, ISSN, number of citations, publisher, ranking and other important details of more than 15000 journals and conferences from over 4,000 international publishers in different areas. ... This will help you to find out other top journals and conference opportunities where you can submit your research paper or ...
Ranking journals in JCR. Journal Citation Reports (or JCR) is a product of Clarivate Analytics and is an authoritative resource for impact factor data. This database provides impact factors and rankings of many journals in the social and life sciences based on millions of citations. It offers numerous sorting options including impact factor ...
This online guide will help you identify common research metrics that are used to measure scholarly impact. This guide also outlines methods and tools you can use to identify journals in your field for publishing. This page gives an overview of the different types of research metrics available, including more standard metrics, like citation counts.
Therefore, there is no set impact factor number considered to be ideal since each field has a different measurement. In general, an impact factor of 10 or higher is considered remarkable, while 3 is good, and the average score is less than 1. Example. The very prestigious journal Nature had an impact factor of 69.504 in the year 2021.
Journal Citation Reports offers data and analysis on journal performance and impact across disciplines and regions.
Disciplines vary widely in the amount of research output, the number of citations that are normally included in papers, and the tendency of a discipline to cite recent articles. 6 For example, Acta Poetica focuses on literary criticism. Its impact factor would be a poor measure of the journal's influence.
The top 5% of journals have impact factors approximately equal to or greater than 6 (610 journals or 4.9% of the journals tracked by JCR). Approximately two-thirds of the journals tracked by JCR have a 2017 impact factor equal to or greater than 1. Impact Factors are useful, but they should not be the only consideration when judging quality.
Journal Impact Factor. An offshoot of citation analysis is Journal Impact Factor (JIF) which is used to sort or rank journals by their relative importance. The underlying assumption behind Impact Factors (IF) is that journals with high IF publish articles that are cited more often than journals with lower IF. Impact factors may be used by:
How. Follow these steps to find the Impact Factor of a journal: Search for a journal using the 'Journal/book title' field on the ScienceDirect homepage or browse journal titles by selecting ' Journals & Books ' in the top right corner. Click the journal title to navigate to the journal's home page. The Impact Factor and Journal CiteScore ...
Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation. Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health. Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment. Only Open Access Journals Only SciELO Journals Only WoS Journals. Display journals with at least. Citable Docs. (3years) Apply. Download data. 1 - 50 of 29165.
They are used to evaluate the quality of a journal, as well as to determine the influence of your research in your field. In this series of free modules, we walk you through some of the key players in metrics. Measure article, author and journal influences using CiteScore metrics, h-index, article-level metrics, SNIP, SJR, impact factor and more.
Aug 29, 2024 100457. Impact factors are used to measure the importance of a journal by calculating the number of times selected articles are cited within the last few years. The higher the impact factor, the more highly ranked the journal. It is one tool you can use to compare journals in a subject category.
How. Follow these steps to find the Impact Factor of a journal: Go to the journal's homepage. When you're on the journal homepage, you will be able to see the Impact factor to the right of the Journal's name. For more information on journal metrics, please visit the Measuring a journal's impact page from our website.
Journal-level metrics. CiteScore™ metrics: Introduced in 2016, a family of eight indicators to analyze the publication influence of serial titles. CiteScore metrics offer more robust, timely and accurate indicators of a serial title's impact. SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): A prestige metric for journals, book series and conference proceedings that weights the value of a citation based on the ...
Research impact measures are different across disciplines such as publication types (e.g. articles vs. monographs), scientific communication nature, publication length and frequency, aging speed of publications. Therefore, Discipline Impact Factor needs to be considered and measuring metrics have to be adapted to suit the discipline in question.
The Impact IF 2023 of Microbiology Research is 2.33, which is computed in 2024 as per its definition. The impact IF , also denoted as Journal impact score (JIS), of an academic journal is a measure of the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal.