Journal impact factor
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Citations in year y to a journal's items of the two previous years, per citable item (Clarivate's definition).
LaTeX: JIF_y = \frac{C_y(P_{y-1}) + C_y(P_{y-2})}{N_{y-1} + N_{y-2}}
Variables and notation#
JIF_y is the year-y journal metric; C_y(P_(y−1)) and C_y(P_(y−2)) count year-y citations to the previous two years' content; N counts eligible citable items for those years.
Worked example#
If the numerator is 300 citations and eligible items are 40+60=100, the illustrative JIF is 3.0.
Related methods and when to use them#
Clarivate's Journal Impact Factor uses its own coverage and eligibility rules; OpenAlex mean citedness and Scopus CiteScore are separate metrics. This arithmetic example is not an official metric for any journal.
Compare these formulas#
Sources and further reading#
Key findings#
- Journal impact factor was mentioned in 6 papers in the last 30 days (2026-10-07 to 2026-11-05), ranking #168 of the 248 equations and models mentioned.
- By journal category: Higher Education and Research (5) and Finance (1).
- Most of them appeared in Scientometrics (3), International Journal of STEM Education (1) and Minerva (1).
- Often mentioned together with Field-weighted citation impact (2), Instrumental variables (two-stage least squares) (2) and Propensity score matching (2).
- Datasets named in the same papers: S&P 500 (1), Economic Policy Uncertainty index (1) and Facebook (1).
- From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 255 archived papers mentioned Journal impact factor in their title, abstract, keywords or full text, most of them in Mar 2026 (11).
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), Journal impact factor was mentioned in 421 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in higher education and research (253), management (41) and economics (32).
- 85 of them were published in 2025, against 29 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were University of Rome Tor Vergata (8), University of Sheffield (8) and KU Leuven (7).
- The journals publishing most of them were Scientometrics (94), Journal of Informetrics (23) and BMC Medical Research Methodology (15).
- The most-cited of them is “How to design bibliometric research: an overview and a framework proposal” (Review of Managerial Science, 2024), with 739 citations.
Mentions over 36 months#
| Trend | Nov 23–Oct 24 | Nov 24–Oct 25 | Nov 25–Oct 26 | 36 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 77 | 81 | 97 | 255 |
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Higher Education and Research | 25 | 18 | 15 | 21 | 18 | 8 | 21 | 44 | 38 | 45 |
| Management | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 5 | 16 | 11 |
| Economics | 1 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 5 | 6 |
| Statistics | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 4 |
| AI | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 10 | 1 |
| Health Economics and Policy | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| Information Systems | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Operations Research | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Finance | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Marketing | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Tourism and Hospitality | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Accounting | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| All categories | 29 | 25 | 23 | 29 | 20 | 17 | 41 | 69 | 85 | 83 |
Where the papers come from#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Scientometrics | 94 |
| 2 | Journal of Informetrics | 23 |
| 3 | BMC Medical Research Methodology | 15 |
| 4 | Research Policy | 9 |
| 5 | Minerva | 6 |
| 6 | Journal of the Knowledge Economy | 6 |
| 7 | Management Review Quarterly | 6 |
| 8 | Quality & Quantity | 5 |
| 9 | The Journal of Academic Librarianship | 4 |
| 10 | Artificial Intelligence Review | 4 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Rome Tor Vergata | 8 |
| 2 | University of Sheffield | 8 |
| 3 | KU Leuven | 7 |
| 4 | Mercatorum University | 7 |
| 5 | Texas A&M University | 5 |
| 6 | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | 5 |
| 7 | University of Technology Sydney | 5 |
| 8 | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique | 4 |
| 9 | Leiden University | 4 |
| 10 | Ludovika University of Public Service | 4 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 41 |
| 2 | Germany | 40 |
| 3 | China | 38 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 29 |
| 5 | Spain | 28 |
| 6 | Italy | 26 |
| 7 | Australia | 20 |
| 8 | Netherlands | 15 |
| 9 | Canada | 11 |
| 10 | Austria | 10 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | journal impact factor | 69 |
| 2 | research evaluation | 37 |
| 3 | citation impact | 29 |
| 4 | citation analysis | 18 |
| 5 | bibliometric analysis | 17 |
| 6 | peer review | 16 |
| 7 | scholarly publishing | 14 |
| 8 | citation counts | 13 |
| 9 | citation metrics | 13 |
| 10 | research productivity | 13 |
Most-cited papers#
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). Journal impact factor. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/equations/journal-impact-factor
@misc{scholar4ai-equations-journal-impact-factor,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {Journal impact factor},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/equations/journal-impact-factor}},
urldate = {2026-11-05},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}