An Introduction to Journal Impact Factor™ (JIF™)
Publisher-neutral journal intelligence
What is Journal Citation Reports?
Journal Citation Reports™ (JCR™) provides you with the transparent, publisher-neutral data and statistics you need to make confident decisions in today’s evolving scholarly publishing landscape.
Only journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection™ are eligible for inclusion in the JCR.
Web of Science Editorial Selection Process
In 2024, 544 journals will receive a Journal Impact Factor for the first time.
Using Journal Citation Reports
With access to JCR profile pages, you can:
View your journal’s Journal Impact Factor
Citations in the numerator and citable items in the denominator each link to exportable lists of article data.
Visualize trends
Gain a clear understanding of the context surrounding your journal’s Journal Impact Factor with time trend and citation distribution visualizations.
Identify key contributors
Quickly determine which institutions and regions contribute to your journal’s Journal Impact Factor based on the affiliations of your contributing authors.
Drill down into the data
Identify which articles and reviews have contributed the most citations to your journal’s Journal Impact Factor with a few mouse clicks.
Analyze open access
Easily identify the open access articles in your hybrid journals.
Uncover the sources that cite your journal
Assess how your journal is being cited by other journals in the citation network— including your competitors.
JCR has been around for nearly half a century
Learning resources
When you evaluate your journal’s performance, its value can’t be measured with a single number.
These learning resources will help you understand the data included in Journal Citation Reports so that you can promote your journals responsibly.
Learn more at the Learning Portal.
Avoid becoming a target for academic fraud
Clarivate is committed to supporting the integrity of the scholarly record and taking proactive steps to counter the increasing threats to it. Examples of these threats can include:
Hijacked journals:
Duplicate or fake websites impersonating legitimate journal websites utilizing the title, ISSN and other information of the reputable journal, sometimes known as hijacked journals. Journals with large gaps in their publication schedule are particularly vulnerable to being hijacked.
What you can do…
- Always keep your website and contact information up to date and readily available.
- Adhere to a consistent publication schedule, avoiding gaps.
Papermills:
Paper mills that produce and sell manuscripts containing fabricated or manipulated research and submit these manuscripts for publication on behalf of the authors. They may also manipulate the peer review process by faking the identity of peer reviewers and submitting fabricated peer review reports. Paper mills often target Special Issues managed by Guest Editors outside the journal’s usual peer review and manuscript handling workflows.
What you can do…
Ensure that manuscripts published in special issues undergo the same level of editorial oversight as manuscripts published in the main body of a journal.
Journals with a Journal Impact Factor (JIF) are a more attractive target for fraudulent activity than journals without a JIF. We therefore urge publishers of journals that have received a JIF for the first time to be especially vigilant.
What happens when a journal concern is raised?
If valid concerns are raised regarding an indexed journal, either by users or through monitoring by Clarivate in-house editors, the journal will be re-evaluated according to the selection criteria. Where valid concerns are raised about the quality of the content published by the journal, new content will not be indexed during the course of the re-evaluation. See more policy details. When the evaluation is complete, the publisher will be informed of the outcome and the journal will either:
- be removed from coverage if it no longer meets the quality criteria.
Read more. - or remain covered if it continues to meet the quality criteria.
If the journal meets the quality criteria, any missing content will be indexed. If the journal is removed from coverage, content will not be backfilled. In the most serious cases of breaches in the journal’s editorial standards, as determined by our selection criteria, published content may be removed from Web of Science. Timeframes for completing a re-evaluation will depend on the particular circumstances of each case.
See the following resources for additional information on research integrity:
- Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): https://publicationethics.org/
- WAME: https://wame.org/recommendations-on-publication-ethics-policies-for-medical-journals
- COPE Recommendations for special issues: https://publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents/guest-edited-collections
