The % of Articles in Citable Items emphasizes a journal's original research by calculating the percentage of articles that count toward the total Citable Items. For example, in 2013, Nature has 829 articles and 28 reviews for a total Citable Items of 857. 96% of the Citable Items are original research.

The plus sign indicates that the citation counts for translated and original language versions of the same journal have been combined.

In journal rankings, the small bullet indicates that complete source data were not available for a particular title before the JCR processing deadline (usually mid-February of the JCR year).

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.

Shows the distribution by cited year of citations to articles published in journals in the category in the JCR year.

Aggregate Cited half-life is the median age, in years, of items in any journal in the category that were cited during the JCR year.

Shows the distribution by cited year of citations from journals in the category made in the JCR year.

The median age of articles cited by journals in the category in the JCR Year based on aggregated journal data.

The aggregate Immediacy Index indicates how quickly articles in a subject category are cited.

The aggregate Impact Factor for a subject category is calculated the same way as the Impact Factor for a journal, but it takes into account the number of citations to all journals in the category and the number of articles from all journals in the category. An aggregate Impact Factor of 1.0 means that that, on average, the articles in the subject category published one or two years ago have been cited one time.

An article is a significant item published in a journal covered by Journal Citation Reports®. Editorials, letters, news items, and meeting abstracts are usually not counted as articles because they are not generally cited. The Articles column in the table you see on the Journal Summary page or Journal page counts research articles, review articles, notes, and corrections/retractions. Articles and Reviews are counted separately in the Journal Source Data section of the Journal page.

The Category box plot depicts the distribution of Impact Factors for all journals in the category. The horizontal line that forms the top of the box is the 75th percentile (Q1). The horizontal line that forms the bottom is the 25th percentile (Q3). The horizontal line that intersects the box is the median Impact Factor for the category.

A citation is the formal acknowledgment of intellectual debt to previously published research. It generally contains sufficient bibliographic information to uniquely identify the cited document.

Some of the journals listed in JCR are not citing journals, but are cited-only journals. This means that the references in these journals are not included in the database. This is significant when comparing journals because self-citations from cited-only journals are not included in JCR data. Self-citations often represent a significant percentage of the citations that a journal receives. Cited-only journals may be ceased journals, suspended journals, or superseded titles. Any journal that appears elsewhere in JCR, but not in the Citing Journal Listing, is a cited-only journal.

Median age of the articles that were cited in the JCR year. Half of a journal's cited articles were published more recently than the cited half-life.

Cited Journal data show how many citations a journal received in the JCR year.

The Cited Journal Graph shows the distribution by cited year of citations to articles published in a journal.

Median age of articles cited by the journal in the JCR year.

Citing journal data show how many citations a journal made to other journals (including itself) in the JCR year.

The Journal Ego Network is an graph that depicts the relationship of citation data between the profile journal and the top 20 journals in the JCR dataset for a selected metric.

Like the Impact Factor, the Eigenfactor Score and Article Influence® Score use citation data to assess and track the influence of a journal in relation to other journals. Eigenfactor Metrics are available only for JCR years 2007 and later. You can learn more about Eigenfactor Score and Article Influence Score at www.eigenfactor.org. Eigenfactor Metrics, Eigenfactor Score, Article Influence® Score are Licensed Marks used with permission from the University of Washington The Eigenfactor® Algorithm-2008, was developed by the Metrics Eigenfactor Project: a bibliometric research project conducted by Professor Carl Bergstrom and his laboratory at University of Washington.

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.

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.

International Standard Serial Number, a unique number that identifies a journal. The format is four numbers, a hyphen (-), three numbers, and then a check character that may be a number or X. For example, 0010-4620

The year of the JCR edition displayed in the top right-hand corner of the page. Each JCR year contains one year of citation data. You select the JCR year on the Welcome page.

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.

This is the Subject Category to which the journal is assigned in the Web of Science and JCR.

The Journal Title Changes page lists title changes occurring in the past two years (that is, the JCR year and the preceding year). The listing is in alphabetical order by journal title. To view this list, click the Journal Title Changes link on the Journal page or the Journal Summary List page.

The Normalized Eigenfactor Score is the Eigenfactor score normalized, by rescaling the total number of journals in the JCR each year, so that the average journal has a score of 1. Journals can then be compared and influence measured by their score relative to 1. For example, if a journal has a Normalized Eigenfactor Score of 5, that journal is considered to be 5 times as influential as the average journal in the JCR.

Frequency of publication data categorize the journals in the subject category according to their publication schedule. Subject categories that have a large number of frequently published journals tend to have a high Immediacy Index.

An item is classified as a review if it meets any of the following criteria: it cites more than 100 references it appears in a review publication or a review section of a journal the word review or overview appears in its title the abstract states that it is a review or survey

A self-citation is a reference to an article from the same journal. Self-citations can make up a significant portion of the citations a journal gives and receives each year. You can compare self-citing rates and self-cited rates to supplement your journal evaluation.

Each journal in JCR is assigned to at least one subject category, indicating a general area of science or the social sciences. Journals may be included in more than one subject category; therefore, when comparing journals across related categories, it is possible to see the same journal title in different categories.

The total number of times that a journal has been cited by all journals included in the database in the JCR year. Citations to journals listed in JCR are compiled annually from the JCR years combined database, regardless of which JCR edition lists the journal and regardless of what kind of article was cited or when the cited article was published. Each unique article-to-article link is counted as a citation. Citations from a journal to an article previously published in the same journal are compiled in the total cites. However, some journals listed in JCR may be cited-only journals, in which case self-cites are not included.