খসড়া অনুবাদ। মূল দেখুন: English
What is the Journal Impact Factor and how is it calculated?
The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a citation-based metric published annually by Clarivate in Journal Citation Reports. It divides the citations a journal received in one year by the citable items it published in the previous two years. The 2026 release covers 22,643 journals across 254 categories, was published on 17 June 2026, and reflects 2025 citation data to articles from 2023–2024.
Detail
The formula
JIF for a given year = (citations in that year to articles the journal published in the two preceding years) ÷ (citable articles published in those two years). A journal citing itself counts. A journal citing another journal in the same publisher counts.
What it does not measure
It does not measure article quality. It does not measure researcher quality. It does not measure your paper's likely citation count. Clarivate itself states: 'the journal-level indicators are designed to support journal evaluation, not to assess the performance of individual researchers or articles.'
Only Web of Science-indexed journals get one
If your journal is not indexed in Web of Science, it has no Journal Impact Factor. This is not a quality judgement — many good journals are Scopus-only. But any claim of an 'Impact Factor' from a non-JCR journal is either a different metric or invented.
What's new in 2026
521 journals from 47 countries received their first Impact Factor. 58% of these are outside the US and Western Europe.