26 July 2022
Clarivate have announced 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.
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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.
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 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.
Read the full announcement here: https://clarivate.com/blog/clarivate-announces-changes-to-the-2023-journal-citation-reports-release/
You can read more discussion, and clarification from Clarivate here on Scholarly Kitchen: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/07/26/the-end-of-journal-impact-factor-purgatory-and-numbers-to-the-thousandths/