Starting from the 2023 JCR release, Journal Impact Factors will be expanded to all Web of Science Core Collection journals including arts and humanities.
Today we’re proud to announce that in the 2023 release of the Journal Citation Reports™, all Web of Science Core Collection™ journals will receive a Journal Impact Factor (JIF)™. This means expanding the JIF from Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)™ and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)™ to include journals from the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI)™ and the multidisciplinary Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)™.
The annual Journal Citation Reports enable the research community, publishers and librarians to evaluate and compare the scholarly impact of the world’s quality journals using a range of indicators, descriptive data and visualizations.
We have made the decision to display the JIF for all journals that are indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection as part of our ongoing commitment to the integrity of the scholarly record. To accelerate the pace of innovation, research funders, institutions and researchers need to be able to make decisions based on quality data they can trust. Our rigorous selection process allows us to keep untrustworthy journals out of our indexes, which, coupled with our careful data curation, means that the research community can rely on the data and metrics in the Journal Citation Reports.
Giving all quality journals a Journal Impact Factor will provide full transparency to articles and citations that have contributed to impact, and therefore will help them demonstrate their value to the research community.
By expanding the JIF to all journals that have passed the rigorous Web of Science quality criteria, this latest enhancement also helps level the playing field for all quality journals including recently-launched journals, open access journals, journals with a niche or regionally-focused scope and journals from the Global South [1].
This decision is aligned to our position that publications in all quality journals, not just highly cited journals, should be eligible for inclusion in research assessment exercises.
It means that:
- Almost 9,000 journals – from more than 3,000 publishers, many of which are smaller publishers from the developing world – will have a JIF for the first time.
- There will be an 8% increase in gold open access journals that will have a JIF.
- There will be a minimum 5% increase in journals from the Global South[1] that will have a JIF.
In addition, the 2023 release of the Journal Citation Reports will display the JIF with one decimal place, rather than the current three decimal places, to encourage users to consider the other indicators and descriptive data in the JCR when comparing journals.
No changes will be made to the JCR until the next annual release in June 2023.
We have consulted widely across our community before announcing these changes; this includes individual discussions with publishers, librarians and bibliometricians as well as a global quantitative community surveys. We’re pleased that to date, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We encourage anyone with further feedback or questions on the planned changes to contact us at ISI@clarivate.com.
[1] According to the United Nations definition: http://www.fc-ssc.org/en/partnership_program/south_south_countries
