Impact Factor
Publishing & metrics
A journal-level metric reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles in that journal; one signal of journal standing, not article quality.
The Journal Impact Factor is the average number of citations received in a given year by articles published in that journal over the previous two years. Calculated by Clarivate from Web of Science data and published annually in the Journal Citation Reports, it remains the most widely recognised journal-level metric.
Its limitations are well documented. Citation practices vary enormously between disciplines, so figures cannot be compared across fields. The distribution behind the average is highly skewed, with a small number of heavily cited papers pulling the mean up, which means the metric says little about any individual article.
Because of this, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and many institutions now discourage using it to evaluate individual researchers. Treat it as one signal among several — alongside CiteScore, SJR, SNIP, ABDC or ABS listings, and the journal's actual readership in your field — rather than the sole basis for choosing where to submit.
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