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Where do I find the Impact Factor of a journal?

The Impact Factor is a measure of scientific influence of scholarly journals. It measures the average number of citations received in a particular year by papers published in the journal during the two preceding years and is produced by a publisher called Thomson Reuters. The Impact Factor can be found on the Journal home page of journals that have an Impact Factor. 

Please note: Not all journals have an Impact Factor.

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 are mentioned in the header on the right side of the page.

screenshot of CiteScore and Impact Factor placement on journal home page

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Measuring Your Impact: Journal Impact Factor

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About Journal Impact Factor

The journal impact factor (JIF) 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. Clarivate Analytics is the creator and only provide of the journal impact factor. Other publishers and companies have similar sounding  "impact factor" names or terms.

The normalized impact factor (NIF) was introduced by Clarivate Analytics as a method to enable better comparisons between disciplines in each field. It targets 54 disciplines in the biomedical field to assess validity and practical usage. 

Find the Journal Impact Factor

Use Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to find the impact factor of a journal.  

You can enter a journal title in the Search box under "Go to Journal Profile".   Because impact factors mean little on their own, it's best to view the journal you are interested in comparison to the other journals in the same category.  To determine the impact factor for a particular journal, select a JCR edition (Science and/ or Social Science), year, and Categories, found on the left of the screen. Click  Submit .  Scroll the list to find the journal you are interested in.

Contact the library if you have questions for trouble finding a journal in JCR.

Impact Factor Video

More Information

If you have more questions about metrics and assessment contact:

Charlotte Bhasin or Mario Scarcipino

If you have questions about databases or where to publish contact:

Michelle Kraft or Matt Weaver

Where To Publish

The library recommends using these aids to determine the best place to publish your research.

  • Contact Matt Weaver  for journals with impact factors by article topic
  • Find journals indexed in Medline
  • Be iNFORMed check list to asses journal & publisher quality
  • Beall's List of Predatory Journals & Publishers to avoid potential problem journals

Other Journal Metrics

Eigenfactor.

Eignenfactor scores can be found in the above listed Journal Citation Reports or at eigenfactor.org.  Journal Citation Reports or at eigenfactor.org. Eigenfactor scores are intended to give a measure of how likely a journal is to be used, and are thought to reflect how frequently an average researcher would access content from that journal. (Wikipedia)  ( Find out more about the Eigenfactor )    

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) (by Elsevier)

“The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.).” Scopus contains more than 15,000 journals from over 4,000 international publishers as well as over 1000 open access journals.  SCImago's "evaluation of scholarly journals is to assign weights to bibliographic citations based on the importance of the journals that issued them, so that citations issued by more important journals will be more valuable than those issued by less important ones." ( SJR indicator )

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  • Last Updated: Oct 11, 2022 11:45 AM
  • URL: https://my.clevelandclinic.libguides.com/impact

Measuring your research impact: Google Scholar Metrics

Getting Started

Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

Eigenfactor and Article Influence

Scimago Journal and Country Rank

Google Scholar Metrics

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  • Author disambiguation
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Author Impact

Journal Impact

Tracking and Measuring Your Impact

Author Disambiguation

Broadening Your Impact

Google Scholar Metrics  allows authors to view journal rankings and ratings by various h-indeces.  Journal ranking can be viewed for the top 100 publications in 9 different languages, or by broad subject research areas and numerous subcategories. Scholar Metrics uses those articles published between 2009 and 2013 and citation from all articles indexed in Google Scholar. 

  • << Previous: Scimago Journal and Country Rank
  • Next: Tracking and Measuring Your Impact >>
  • Last Updated: Dec 7, 2022 1:18 PM
  • URL: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/impact
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Q. How do I find the impact factor of a journal?

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Answered By: Elizabeth Galoozis (she/her) Last Updated: Jul 14, 2022     Views: 43995

You can look up the impact factor of a journal through the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database. A journal's impact factor is a measure of how often the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. The impact factor will help you evaluate a journal's relative importance, especially when you compare it to others in the same field. Not every journal will have an impact factor, but there are other ways to measure impact to a field.

In Journal Citation Reports, enter the title of the journal or browse journals by rank or category. 

how to check impact factor of research paper

[Screenshot of a yellow arrow selecting a "Browse by Journal" search in the Journal Citation Reports database]

Clicking on a journal title will give additional details about the calculation. For example, here is an explanation of how impact factor was calculated for the journal Social Work Research .

how to check impact factor of research paper

[Screenshot of an explanation of a journal impact factor calculation]

Use the "All Years" tab to access key metrics and additional data for the current year and all prior years for this journal.

how to check impact factor of research paper

[Screenshot of yellow arrow highlighting the "All Years" tab when searching]

Since impact factors vary widely by discipline, it is helpful to get a baseline for your discipline by searching for subject area (category). Impact factor data is only available for journals indexed by Web of Science.

how to check impact factor of research paper

[Screenshot of search for journal impact factor by subject area]

For more information on citation counts and Impact factors, visit: Evaluating Information Sources: Impact Factors and Citation Counts

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Introduction to Impact Factor and Other Research Metrics

  • Types of Metrics

Impact Factor

  • Identifying Journals
  • More Resources

More Information

  • About Journal Impact Factor Visit this article published by Thomson Reuters on journal impact factor to learn more about the bibliometric and how it measures importance.
  • Annual Reviews Rankings in JCR Visit this page to see how Annual Review Journals currently rank in Journal Citation Reports.
  • SCImago Journal and Country Rank The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a publicly available portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus database.

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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, which is now a part of Clarivate Analytics. Journal Impact Factor can be found in the  Journal Citation Reports or the JCR, as it's commonly known. Over the years various organizations have been created similar journal-level metrics, such as  SCImago Journal & Country Rank .

This page describes how to find impact factor in Journal Citation Reports .

Journal Citation Reports

Clarivate Analytics (formerly Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)) ranks, evaluates, and compares journals within subject categories and publishes the results in Journal Citation Reports . Journal Citation Reports provides ranking for journals in science, technology, and the social sciences. For every journal, the database collects and/or calculates information such as:

  • citation/article counts
  • impact factor
  • immediacy index
  • cited half-life
  • citing half-life
  • source data listing
  • citing journal listing
  • cited journal listing
  • publisher information
  • subject categories

Find Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

Follow the instructions below to find the Journal Citation Reports using the Library's resources.

  • Begin at the Library homepage .
  • Click on the orange tab that says "Find Materials," then scroll down until you see a laptop icon with the words "Databases by Subject and A-Z"; click on the icon.
  • Type journal citations reports in the search box on the left side of the screen and then click on the magnifying glass to search that title.
  • Your result will say "Journal Citation Reports"; click on it. It might ask you to provide your Net ID and password if you are off campus.

Find the Impact Factor

  • Once in the database you either search by journal title (if you know which journal you want to see) or browse by category, which will let you view journals by JIF by discipline.
  • On the left side you can choose search criteria, like impact factor range, year, and if the journal is open access.
  • It is important to choose the right edition based on your subject area, as you won't be able to see specific journals if you choose the wrong one. Once you have finished selecting what to search, click Submit.
  • You can't access impact factors from last year because the calculations only happen every two years (i.e. if the current year is 2021 the farthest you can go back is 2020). Most people choose the most current year they can access.
  • Journals limited by the subject area, publisher, or geographic region.
  • View all journals in order to browse.
  • Search for a specific journal if you already know its title

Once you find a journal, the JCR gives you information about the journal, including the journal's abbreviations, how often it is published each year, the publisher, and the ISSN. 

Controversy

Many people have questioned the legitimacy of impact factor. Here are a few reasons why:

  • Impact factor focuses purely on the numbers. There is no consideration of qualitative elements that have become important in today's world.
  • Impact factor fails to incorporate more recent ways of sharing and using research, including Twitter mentions and posts, citation management downloads, and news and community information.
  • Because impact factor is based on citations in only indexed journals , it fails to incorporate statistics from journals that might not be indexed and other sources like conference papers (which are important in the social sciences).
  • Basic or summary information is usually cited the most in academia. That means that journals that publish articles with basic information are more likely to have higher impact factors. Journals that publish obscure or innovative information might not have as high of an impact factor.
  • Some argue that impact factor is encouraging scholars to stick with mainstream topics and research.
  • Scholars don't always have to cite something for it to be influential. Sometimes researchers just read something and it influences them, regardless of if they cite it in a future paper or piece of research.
  • The journals in the JCR are mostly published in English. This means that many international sources aren't included in the conversation.
  • It has been argued that journals have the ability to skew impact factor for their own journal. Before publishing an author, they will ask the author to cite more articles within their journal so that their impact factor goes up. This is NOT a common occurrence but instead something we should be aware of.
  • << Previous: Types of Metrics
  • Next: Identifying Journals >>
  • Last Updated: Feb 28, 2024 12:49 PM
  • URL: https://guides.library.illinois.edu/impact

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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Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other Metrics: Citation Analysis

  • Measuring Your Impact

Citation Analysis

Find your h-index.

  • Other Metrics/ Altmetrics
  • Journal Impact Factor (IF)
  • Selecting Publication Venues

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.

Web of Science

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it.  It i ndexes over 10,000 journals in the arts, humanities,  sciences, and social sciences.

  • Enter the name of the author in the top search box (e.g. Smith JT).  
  • Select Author from the drop-down menu on the right.
  • To ensure accuracy for popular names, enter Univ Illinois in the middle search box, then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.  (You might have to add the second search box by clicking "add another field" before you enter the address)
  • Click on Search
  • a list of publications by that author name will appear.   To the right of each citation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.   Click the number next to "times cited" to view the articles that have cited your article

Scopus provide citation counts for articles indexed within it (limited to article written in 1996 and after).   It indexes o ver 15,000 journals from over 4,000 international publishers across the disciplines.

  • Once in Scopus, click on the Author search tab.
  • Enter the name of the author in the search box.  If you are using initials for the first and/or middle name, be sure to enter periods after the initials (e.g. Smith J.T.). 
  • To ensure accuracy if it is a popular name, you may enter University of Illinois in the affiliation field.  
  • If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining). 
  • Once you click on the author's profile, a list of the publications will appear and to the right of each ctation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.  
  • Click the number to view the articles that have cited your article

 Dimensions (UIC does not subscribe but parts are free to use)

  • Indexes over 28000 journals
  • Does not display h-index in Dimensions but can calculate or if faculty, look in MyActivities
  • Includes Altmetrics score
  • Google Scholar

Google Scholar provides citation counts for articles found within Google Scholar.  Depending on the discipline and cited article, it may find more cited references than Web of Science or Scopus because overall, Google Scholar is indexing more journals and more publication types than other databases. Google Scholar is not specific about what is included in its tool but information is available on how Google obtains its content .   Limiting searches to only publications by a specific author name is complicated in Google Scholar.  Using Google Scholar Citations and creating your own profile will make it easy for you to create a list of publications included in Google Scholar.   Using your Google Scholar Citations account, you can see the citation counts for your publications and have GS calculate your h-index.  (You can also search Google Scholar by author name and the title of an article to retrieve citation information for a specific article.)

  • Using your google (gmail) account, create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar.  Follow the prompt on the scrren to set up your profile.   Once complete, this will show all the times the articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar and your h-index will be provided.  Its your choice whether you make your profile public or private but if you make it public, you can link to it from your own webpages.

Try Harzing's Publish or Perish Tool in order to more selectively examine published works by a specific author.

Databases containing limited citation counts:

  • PubMed Central
  • Science Direct
  • SciFinder Scholar

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:

Below are instructions for obtaining your h-index from Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar.

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it.  It indexes over 12,000 journals in the arts, humanities,  sciences, and social sciences.  To find an author's h-index in WOS:

  • To ensure accuracy for popular names, add an additional search box and enter "Univ Illinois" and then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.
  • Click on Citation Report on the right hand corner of the results page.  The H-index is on the right of the screen.
  • If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining).  Under the Research section, you will see the h-index listed.
  • If you have worked at more than one place, your name may appear twice with 2 separate h-index ratings.  Select the check box next to each relevent profile, and click show documents.

  Google Scholar

  • Using your google (gmail) account, create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar.  Follow the prompt on the screen to set up your profile.   Once complete, this will show all the times the articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar and your h-index will be provided.  Its your choice whether you make your profile public or private but if you make it public, you can link to it from your own webpages.
  • See  Albert Einstein's
  • Harzing’s Publish or Perish (POP) 
  • Publish or Perish Searches Google Scholar.  After searching by your name, deselect from the list of articles retrieved those that you did not author.  Your h-index will appear at the top of the tool.  Note:This tool must be downloaded to use
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  • Personal Impact Factor and H-Index Calculations

Personal Impact Factor and H-Index Calculations: Home

  • Impact Factor and Cited Reference Searching
  • Journal Impact Factors For the Top Journals in Your Field

Need Assistance Calculating Your Personal Impact Factor?

If you are affiliated with Mount Sinai and need help calculating your personal impact factor, please email us at [email protected] and we'll be happy to schedule an appointment with you to assist you with this task.

Definitions

Mount Sinai faculty who would like to calculate their personal impact factor and/or find their H-index can use the Scopus database to do so. Scopus is the standard at Mount Sinai for calculating these values. Other citation databases, such as Web of Science and Google Scholar, may provide different H-index values and citation data. 

Journal Impact Factor

A journal impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the  average article  in a journal has been cited in a particular year. It is one of the evaluation tools provided by the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports® (JCR®) database. Mount Sinai uses an analogous formula to calculate personal impact factor .

Journal Impact Factor =

Cites in 2021 to articles published in Journal X in 2020 and 2019 Total number of articles published in Journal X in 2020 and 2019

Personal Impact Factor

An individual impact factor is a measure of the average frequency with which your recent articles have been cited in a particular year.

Individual Impact Factor =

Cites in 2021 to articles you published in 2020 and 2019 Total number of articles you published in 2020 and 2019

H-index = The number of papers (N) on a list of publications ranked in descending order by the times cited that have N or more citations.

The H-index was developed by J.E. Hirsch and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Full citation :  Hirsch JE. An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2005 Nov 15;102(46):16569-72.

How to Calculate your Personal Impact Factor

scopus author search

This number is the numerator you will plug in to the individual impact factor equation.

Individual Impact Factor  =

Cites in 2020  to articles you published in 2019 and 2018 Total number of articles you published in 2019 and 2018

Finding Your H-index

For a more detailed look at your H-index , you can view an h-graph by clicking on the link on your Author Details page. This will bring you to a page containing not just a graph, but a way to analyze documents by date range, view co-authors and other document data, and see the total number of citations for all publications.

h-index box on author details page

To view all your publications, follow steps 1-4 in the second box,  How to Calculate your Personal Impact Factor.  Click on All and View Citation Overview to generate a list of results that will allow you to select individual documents. 

Filtering for Citation Overview on Scopus with All and View Citation Overview buttons highlighted

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How to Measure Researcher Impact

Researcher impact.

Research impact is often measured using quantitative methods such as citation counts, the h-index, and journal impact factors. It can also be described qualitatively. Currently, there is no one tool or system that completely measures impact. Each database or tool uses its own measurement systems, indices, data and authority files. And it is difficult to use these tools to compare across disciplines that have different research and publication practices. Furthermore, as scholarly communication continues to evolve, the limitations of existing metrics and tools are becoming increasingly evident. 

There is no one number to perfectly or “correctly” represent the research impact of an individual or a group of researchers.

An author's impact on their field or discipline has traditionally been measured using the number of times they have published and the number of times their academic publications are cited by other researchers. Although the simplest way to demonstrate your impact is to create a list of your publications and the number of times they have been cited, numerous algorithms based on publication data have also been created. Below are some of the more common metrics and tools you can use to measure research impact.

Common Measures of Author Impact

  • Attempts to measure: quality and quantity of author's work
  • h-index is the number of papers (h) that have received (h) or more citations. An author with an h-index of 8 has 8 papers cited at least 8 times.
  • I ncludes more than a single data point (e.g. quality and quantity)
  • Easy to calculate and understand
  • Inaccurate measure of early career researcher impact
  • Only measures published works
  • If a specific resource is used, such as Web of Science or Scopus, results are limited to what the tool has indexed
  • Quality and quantity of author's work, with more weight on quality
  • To calculate the g-index an author’s articles are ranked in decreasing order of the number of the citations each received. The unique largest number such that the top g articles received, together, at least g^2 citations is the g-index.
  • Looks at overall record
  • Allows highly-cited papers to bolster low-cited papers
  • Complicated calculation
  • Not as widely known or accepted as the h-index
  • Quality of author's work
  • Counts the number of publications with at least 10 citations
  • Google Scholar’s My Citation feature is free and easy to use
  • Used only in Google Scholar
  • Limited to works indexed by Google Scholar

Group or Departmental Impact

A research group or department may wish to gauge the impact of its research or learn how it compares to its peers. Similar to individual impact measures, these numbers can give only a partial story of impact.

Publication Activity and Citation Count

Simple indicators of activity and impact for a group or department can be discovered by searching all the individuals in the group and combining their names with the OR search operator. These raw counts will vary depending on what the data source includes. The h-index for a group takes all the publications of every member of the group and creates a cumulative score. Below are some common tools used to obtain publication and citation data.

  • Web of Science  (provided by NC State University Libraries)

Citation database that allows you to create a Citation Report and calculate an h-index.

  • Publish or Perish  (free)

A software program that must be downloaded and installed on a computer. It allows researchers to provide evidence of their research impact. Citations are obtained from Google Scholar. Besides basic statistics it calculates H-index, G-index, and E-index, among others.

  • Scholarometer  (free)

A browser extension that queries Google Scholar. Network visualizations are based on crowdsourced discipline annotations of the queried authors.

  • Google Scholar  (free) and CiteSeerX  (free)

Both can be used to obtain citation counts for articles.  Google Scholar Citations  also allows authors to keep track of citations to their articles.

For more information or assistance, email the Library Impact Metrics team

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how to check impact factor of research paper

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  • Research Process

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.

Language Editing Services by Elsevier Author Services:

We know that, as an academic researcher, you have many things to do to stay relevant.

Writing relevant manuscripts is a crucial part of your endeavors.

That’s why we, at Elsevier Author Service s, support you throughout your publication journey with a suite of products and services to help improve your manuscript before submission.

Check our video Reach the highest standard with Elsevier Author Services to learn more about Author Services.

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Q. How can I look up journals by their impact factors?

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Answered By: Clara Fowler Last Updated: Apr 09, 2024     Views: 84687

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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COMMENTS

  1. Find Impact Factor of Journal Online

    The impact score (IS), 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. It is based on Scopus data. Impact Score is defined as the ratio of the number of citations a journal receives in the latest two years (Including the year ...

  2. 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.

  3. Where do I find the Impact Factor of a journal?

    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 ...

  4. Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other

    There are various tools and methods upon which to measure the impact of an individual or their scholarship. h-index: The h-index is an index to quantify an individual's scientific research output (J.E. Hirsch).. 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.

  5. Measuring a journal's impact

    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.

  6. Track your impact

    Learn how to use Scopus, PlumX and other tools to assess the reach and influence of your research articles. Find out how to get free metrics, validate your author profile and compare journal-level metrics.

  7. Journal Citation Reports

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/public/styles.29276a7c2f2290b7.css">

  8. Web of Science Master Journal List

    Find journals indexed in the Web of Science platform, including Web of Science Core Collection and specialty collections. Use Manuscript Matcher to find relevant, reputable journals for your research based on citation connections.

  9. Measuring your research impact: Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

    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 ...

  10. Journal Impact Factor

    About Journal Impact Factor. The journal impact factor (JIF) 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. Clarivate Analytics is the creator and only provide of the journal ...

  11. The Clarivate Analytics Impact Factor

    The JCR provides quantitative tools for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing journals. The impact factor is one of these; it is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a particular year or period. The annual JCR impact factor is a ratio between citations and recent citable items ...

  12. Measuring your research impact: Google Scholar Metrics

    Google Scholar Metrics allows authors to view journal rankings and ratings by various h-indeces. Journal ranking can be viewed for the top 100 publications in 9 different languages, or by broad subject research areas and numerous subcategories. Scholar Metrics uses those articles published between 2009 and 2013 and citation from all articles ...

  13. How do I find the impact factor of a journal?

    You can look up the impact factor of a journal through the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database. A journal's impact factor is a measure of how often the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. The impact factor will help you evaluate a journal's relative importance, especially when you compare it to others in the ...

  14. Journal Impact Factor (IF)

    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 ...

  15. Introduction to Impact Factor and Other Research Metrics

    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 explains what journal impact factor is, the differences between different impact factors, and the resources you can use to find impact factor.

  16. Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

    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 ...

  17. Publication impact factors

    The origin of impact factors and how they are computed. Eugene Garfield (1925-2017) founded the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in 1955 and initially used the impact factor internally at ISI to identify the best journals to index (The Scientist staff, 2017).A journal's impact factor is calculated annually by dividing the number of current-year citations from all indexed journals ...

  18. Citation Analysis

    If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining). Under the Research section, you will see the h-index listed. If you have worked at more than one place, your name may appear twice with 2 separate h-index ratings. Select the check box next to each relevent profile, and click show documents.

  19. Personal Impact Factor and H-Index Calculations: Home

    Personal Impact Factor. An individual impact factor is a measure of the average frequency with which your recent articles have been cited in a particular year. Individual Impact Factor = Cites in 2021 to articles you published in 2020 and 2019 Total number of articles you published in 2020 and 2019. H-index. H-index = The number of papers (N ...

  20. How to Measure Researcher Impact

    Research impact is often measured using quantitative methods such as citation counts, the h-index, and journal impact factors. It can also be described qualitatively. Currently, there is no one tool or system that completely measures impact. Each database or tool uses its own measurement systems, indices, data and authority files.

  21. SJR : Scientific Journal Rankings

    SJR : Scientific Journal Rankings. Display journals with at least. Citable Docs. (3years) Apply. Download data. 1 - 50 of 29165. Title.

  22. What is Journal Impact Factor?

    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 ...

  23. How can I look up journals by their impact factors?

    Apr 09, 2024 84524. 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 ...

  24. How reliable is this research? Tool flags papers discussed on PubPeer

    In its 'paper scorecard', the tool also flags any papers in the three generations of referenced studies in which more than 25% of papers in the bibliography are self-citations — references ...