Researcher Compass

What Is the Journal Impact Factor (JIF)?

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF), calculated annually by Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports (JCR), measures the average number of citations received by articles published in a journal over the previous two years. For example, if a journal’s 2025 JIF is 5.0, it means that, on average, articles published in 2023 and 2024 received five citations each. This simple calculation has become a widely recognized indicator of journal prestige.

Limitations of the Impact Factor

1. Focus on Journals, Not Individual Articles
   While the JIF is often used as a proxy for the quality of individual articles, it is important to remember that it reflects the average citation performance of the journal as a whole. High-impact journals often publish a mix of highly cited articles and less-cited ones, meaning an article’s actual reach may differ significantly from the journal’s average.
2. Citation Window Bias
   The JIF is based on a two-year citation window, which disadvantages fields with slower citation practices, such as humanities and social sciences. Research in these areas often takes longer to gain recognition, making the JIF less representative of their impact.
3. Subject Area Differences
   Citation practices vary widely across disciplines. Fields like biomedicine and physics tend to generate more citations than others, such as mathematics or art history. Comparing JIFs across disciplines can therefore be misleading.
4. Exclusion of Non-Traditional Outputs
   The JIF focuses exclusively on citations, ignoring other forms of research impact, such as societal relevance, policy influence, or public engagement.

Alternatives to the Impact Factor

To address these limitations, researchers and institutions are increasingly turning to alternative metrics that provide a more nuanced view of research impact:

1. Altmetrics Explorer
   Altmetric Explorer keeps track of “altmetrics” for scholarly outputs. Altmetrics Explorer captures “online mentioning” of research outputs from different sources (e.g. news, social media, patents, policy documents, multimedia platforms, blogs, etc.), thus providing “evidence” to demonstrate “Research Impact” beyond the academia. The mentioning sources enable researchers to identify “who”, “what”, “why” and “where” about the mentioning to trace the breadth and depth of their impact.
2. Policy Impact
   Beyond traditional citation metrics, the influence of research on public policy is an increasingly important measure of impact. Studies cited in government reports, white papers, or international guidelines demonstrate their ability to shape decision-making and address real-world challenges. Metrics that track such citations can highlight research with direct societal relevance. Overton is a policy citation database that indexes millions of policy documents, guidelines, publications and working papers from national, regional and city governments, think tanks, policy-focused NGOs and IGOs, etc. all over the world. It keeps track of how research publications have been referenced and cited by these policy documents. It is therefore an analytics tool that can help provide “evidence” to demonstrate the “political impact” of research.
3. SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR)
   The SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) is an open access portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the citation data in the Scopus database. This metric accounts for both the number of citations a journal receives and the prestige of the citing journals, offering a more comprehensive measure of journal influence.
4. Article-Level Metrics
   Metrics like citation counts, downloads, and altmetrics (e.g., social media mentions, news coverage) focus on the performance of individual articles, offering a more granular understanding of their impact.
5. Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI)
   The FWCI compares the citation performance of an article to the global average for similar research. This field-normalized metric accounts for disciplinary differences, making it a fairer measure of impact.
6. h-Index
   The h-index evaluates an author’s productivity and citation impact by measuring how many of their articles have been cited at least "h" times. While it has its own limitations, it provides a useful author-level metric.

A Balanced Approach

The JIF can still serve as a useful indicator when used appropriately, but it should not be the sole determinant of a journal's or article's value. Researchers are encouraged to adopt a balanced approach, considering multiple metrics alongside qualitative factors such as journal scope, audience, and editorial policies. By doing so, they can make better-informed decisions about where to publish and how to evaluate research impact.

In an era where research is increasingly interdisciplinary and global, relying on a single metric like the Impact Factor is no longer sufficient. Exploring alternative metrics allows for a fuller understanding of research contributions and helps ensure that the impact of scholarly work is judged fairly and inclusively.

For detailed information, please refer to the Library Guide on Impact of Journals