Journal Profile

Each journal covered in the Journal Citation Reports has a Journal Profile page providing a comprehensive overview of related information and Key Indicators, allowing users to see multiple years of data in a glance. Information related to the journal's publisher, location, and publication frequency, and other criteria relevant are presented at the top of the page beneath the title. 

The Journal Profile page also provides access to detailed information about the journal, data, metrics and content underlying the journal’s listing in the JCR.

The profile provides the following information:

Select the year (the most recent, a previous year, or All Years to all available data summarized).

Journal Information

Journal Impact Factor (JIF) trend and calculation (with and without self-citations)

Journal Impact Factor contributing items

Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) trend

Total Citations

Citation Distribution

Open access (OA) items and citations

Rank by Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

Rank by Journal Citation Indicator (JCI)

Content metrics (source data and contributions by organizations and location)

Additional metrics (Eigenfactor Score, Normalized Eigenfactor, Article Influence Score, and Immediacy Index)

The Journal information section contains:

  • Basic bibliographic information about the journal, including publisher, ISSN and e-ISSN (where available), open access status, language, frequency of publication, and Web of Science categorization.

  • A link to the current and previous years, plus an All Years summary.

In the top right of the journal profile page, you can either click on the heart icon to Favorite a journal or on the download icon to Export to PDF.

Selecting All Years for the journal profile displays yearly breakdown of key JCR metrics including the following indicators, which can be customized:

  • JCR year

  • Total citations

  • Journal Impact Factor

  • JIF without Self-Cites

  • 5-Year Impact Factor

  • Immediacy Index

  • Citable Items

  • Total Articles

  • Total Reviews

  • Cited Half-Life

  • Citing Half-Life

  • Eigenfactor Score

  • Article Influence Score

  • % Articles in Citable Items

  • Normalized Eigenfactor

  • Average JIF Percentile

The All Years journal profile grid can be downloaded using the Export link in a CSV format.

 

 

Journal Impact Factor (JJIF) Values, Data, and Trends

Beginning with the 2022 metrics, released in 2023, all journals in the Web of Science Core Collection will receive a JIF. This extends to the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) for the first time. Additionally, all JIF, JIF without self-cites, 5 Year JIF, and Immediacy Index values will be displayed to 1 decimal point from 2022 onwards. No change is being made to earlier years.

JIF values that would round down to 0 will be displayed as <0.1 going forward.

The interactive graph above shows the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and JIF Percentile Rank for the last five years in category. Hover over any point in the graph to see values.

  • The JIF trend is represented as a bar graph, and corresponds to the left-hand axis.

  • The JIF Percentile in Category is represented as line-and-marker graph, and corresponds to the right-hand axis. The 75th percentile gridline marks the lower boundary of the top quartile journal rank; the 50th percentile gridline marks the lower boundary of the second quartile journal rank; the 25th percentile gridline marks the lower boundary of the third quartile. Journals with a percentile rank below 25% are in the bottom quartile in that category.

  • Prior years are presented in ascending order, from the four years prior to the current JIF year to the current year. The current year JIF is highlighted, and represents the value shown above the graph. Hovering over any individual year displays the JIF for that year and the JIF Percentile rank for each category. Clicking any category in the legend will change the graph to show data for that category.

  • To see the full history of both JIF, JIF Percentile, and category assignment for a journal, click the View all years link.

  • The graph can be exported in a PDF format using the export link.

Beginning with the 2022 metrics released in June 2023, titles indexed in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) will have JIFs calculated. Only one year is being calculated for 2022; these journals will not have trend data to display until the 2023 release in June 2024.

Journal Impact Factor data for previous years is only displayed for journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI).

The tabbed Journal Impact Factor contributing items table displays:

  • Citable items – the full list of documents from the previous two years, their open access status, and their citation count (for the JIF year). These documents contribute the JIF calculation numerator (citations for JIF year) and denominator (number of citable items). Click any item to see more information or to view the full record in the Web of Science.

  • Citing Sources – the journals titles that generated the citations used in the JIF calculation for the JCR year. Click any source title to see the list of citing articles from that source. Click on the citing article to see the individual cited reference details. Both linked and unlinked cited references are shown here. Click export on either tab to download the table in CSV format.

Journal Citation Indicator (JCI)

The Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) is displayed in the profile for all titles covered in the Journal Citation Reports. The JCI was introduced in 2021 with the release of the 2020 metrics and was calculated back to 2017.

  • The JCI trend is represented as a bar graph.

  • The interactive graph shows the last five JCR years. The current year is highlighted and represents the value shown above the graph. Hovering over any years displays the JCI for that year.

  • The JCI is a normalized indicator and is not category dependent, journals in multiple categories will have a single JCI. The average JCI of any category is approximately 1.

  • The graph can be exported in a PDF format using the export link.

 

Total Citations and Citation Distribution

The bar chart of Total Citations shows the total number of times that a journal has been cited by all Web of Science Core Collection sources included in the database in the JCR year. To see more data, click View all years.

The graph can be exported in a PDF format using the export link in the top right of the Total Citations tile

The Citation Distribution shows the frequency with which items published in the year or two years prior were cited in the JCR data year (i.e., the components of the calculation of the JIF). The graph has similar functionality as the JIF Trend graph, including hover-over data for each data point, and an interactive legend where hovering over a data element’s legend highlights that element in the body of the graph. In this way, users can view the specific contributions of Articles, Reviews, or Non-Citable (other) items to the JIF numerator.

Article Citation Median shows the median citation count in the JCR year for all items with the document type “Article” and published in the year or two years prior to the JCR data year. These items are counted in the JIF denominator as “citable items.” A journal that has an Article Citation Median value of “n/a” has no materials in the JCR denominator with the article document type.

Review Citation Median shows the median citation count in the JCR year for all items with the document type Review and published in the year or two years prior to the JCR data year. These items are also counted in the JIF denominator as “citable items.” A journal that has a Review Citation Median value of “n/a” has no materials in the JCR denominator with the review document type.

Items included in the Other category on the graph comprise the non-scholarly materials in the journal, including such things as Editorials, news items, correspondence, corrections, obituaries, etc. These are considered non-scholarly and are not counted as part of the denominator of the JIF, however, they may receive citations. Citations to the non-scholarly content are an important part of how the journal influences the scholarly literature, and are included in the JIF numerator.

Non whole-number medians are rounded up to the next highest whole number value to simplify display.

The number of unlinked citations is shown next to the graph on the left. The number and type of items that received no citations in the JIF year (Times cited = 0) is displayed on the right.

The graph can be exported in a PDF format using the export link.

 

Open Access

This shows the contribution of open access (gold) to journal impact and how open access content contributes to a journal’s citations.

The two donut charts show a breakdown for published items and citations to those items. These charts cover items published in the journal in the JCR data year and in the previous two years. The count of citations is current up to the date of the JCR extraction.

For example, in the 2022 JCR data, released in June 2023, the Open Access data shows the publication model (OA or subscription/free to read) of materials published in 2020, 2021, 2022, and citations in 2022 to these items.

The identification of the OA types comes from Our Research (formerly ImpactStory), the same source used for Web of Science and InCites Open Access identification.

Learn more on our Open Access help page.

 

JIF and JCI Rank

The table ranks the journal by Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in its category by JCR year, or where a journal is in multiple categories, each category and corresponding edition (Science Citation Index Expanded or Social Science Citation Index). The list can be scrolled to view data from earlier years. The JIF rank, JIF quartile and JIF percentile are shown for each year (percentiles and quartiles are by rank). The current JCR year is highlighted and the rank for each category displayed at the top of the table.

Journals indexed in AHCI and ESCI are receiving a JIF for the first time with the 2022 metrics, released in June 2023. They will not however receive a rank, quartile, or percentile. These values will be calculated with the release of the 2023 metrics in June 2024. Learn more here.

The table ranks the journal according to the Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) in its category by JCR year, where a journal is in multiple categories, each category and corresponding edition (Science Citation Index Expanded or Social Science Citation Index). The list can be scrolled to view data from earlier years. The JCI rank, JCI quartile and JCI percentile are shown for each year (percentiles and quartiles are by rank). The current JCR year is highlighted and the rank for each category displayed at the top of the table.

 

Other Metrics

Content metrics provide information about the source items and contributions to the Journal Citation Reports

  • Source Data - shows the number of citable items in the JCR year.

  • Average JIF Percentile - this takes the sum of the JIF Percentile rank for each category under consideration, then calculates the average of those values. Individual category values are also shown.

  • Contributions by organizations - those that have contributed the most papers to the journal in the most recent three-year period.

  • Contributions by country/region - those that have contributed the most papers to the journal in the most recent three-year period.

  • Data for each tile can be downloaded using the Export link in a CSV format.

These are complementary metrics to help users better understand journal performance. Each tile shows data in a bar chart format for the previous five JCR years (where available).

Eigenfactor Score - this is a reflection of the density of the network of citations around the journal using 5 years of cited content as cited by the Current Year. It considers both the number of citations and the source of those citations, so that highly cited sources will influence the network more than less cited sources. The Eigenfactor calculation does not include journal self-citations.

Normalized Eigenfactor Score - this 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.

Article influence Score - this normalizes the Eigenfactor Score according to the cumulative size of the cited journal across the prior five years. The mean Article Influence Score for each article is 1.00. A score greater than 1.00 indicates that each article in the journal has above-average influence.

Immediacy Index - this is the count of citations in the current year to the journal that reference content in this same year. Journals that have a consistently high Immediacy Index attract citations rapidly.

 

2023 Changes

Beginning with the 2022 metrics, released in 2023, all journals in the Web of Science Core Collection will receive a JIF. This extends to the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) for the first time. Additionally, all JIF, 5 Year JIF, and Immediacy Index values will be displayed to 1 decimal point from 2022 onwards. No change is being made to earlier years.

JIF values that would round down to 0 will be displayed as <0.1 going forward.

Journals indexed in AHCI and ESCI are receiving a JIF for the first time with the 2022 metrics, released in June 2023. They will not however receive a rank, quartile, or percentile. These values will be calculated with the release of the 2023 metrics in June 2024. Learn more here .

This displays a breakdown of the journal’s articles by Open Access (OA) type.

For a hybrid journal, one that publishes both OA content and subscription content, users can easily identify the number of articles published under a subscription access model and identify those published under Creative Commons licenses (gold open access).

The goal is to increase transparency around how these articles contribute to a journal’s citations.

The data included in these tiles summarizes the items published in the journal in both the JCR data year and the previous two years. For example, in the 2022 JCR data, released in June 2023, the open access data shows the publication model (OA or subscription) of materials published in 2020, 2021 and 2022, and citations in 2022 to these items.

The identification of the open access types comes from Our Research, the same source used for Web of Science and InCites open access identification.

Classifications Used in Web of Science

In the Web of Science Core Collection, we use a data feed from Our Research to identify five types of open access papers:

  • Gold

  • Gold - Hybrid

  • Free to Read

  • Green Published

  • Green Accepted

JCR uses only Gold OA for the donut graphs on the profile page. Additional OA data can be viewed on the Web of Science platform.

OA Classifications used in JCR

Gold OA

To show the relationship between OA status at publication and citations in the JCR data, the two gold OA types are grouped together. The Gold OA label on the JCR profile page refers to papers tagged as Gold or Gold - Hybrid in the Web of Science Core Collection. The data are current as of the time of JCR extraction from the Web of Science.

Subscription and Free to Read

Articles in the Web of Science identified as Free to Read (formerly Bronze)are labeled as such in the JCR. This is a relatively recent term, used by Our Research to describe content that is free to read on the publisher site, but not published under an OA license. Papers that are categorized as Green Published and Green Accepted in Web of Science are often subject to an embargo after initial publication and available to subscribers only for that time; these are included in the Subscription and free to read group.

Citable Items

All materials indexed as articles or reviews in Web of Science are counted as Citable Items in the denominator of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and the Immediacy Index. They represent the scholarly contribution of a journal to the literature. Citations to citable items account for nearly 98% of citations linked to journal content in Web of Science.

Other

Any substantive, indexed item in the journal, such as editorial material, correspondence, news, meeting abstracts, etc., are non-citable items. These items are not counted as part of the scholarly content in the JIF denominator, and are grouped as other content in the JCR.

Unlinked

Citations in the JCR are aggregated according to the journal title, independently of whether they are linked to an individual item in the journal. Although the rate of linked citations can vary between journals, over 95% of citations in the JCR are linked to an item in the journal. Unlinked citations are included in all JCR citation metrics and are displayed specifically in the citation chart, therefore, it is important they are represented in the descriptive citation data in the OA data.

The current data was extracted from Our Research in April 2021 and will be periodically updated from the date of the release onwards

Read more about Open Access.