By Yeo Pin Pin, Head, Research Services
Clarivate Analytics released its new edition of Journal Citation Reports (JCR) in July 2022 which gives the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) for 2021.
SMU Libraries subscribes to JCR and is available via the A-Z Databases page.
COVID-19's impact on JIF
Some journals saw a jump in their JIF as noted by Dr Nandita Quaderi in the blog post “Journal Citation Reports 2022: COVID-19 research continues to drive increased citation impact”.
The JIF for Lancet jumped to 202.731 in 2021 from 79.232 in 2020. This moved Lancet into the top journal in the general medicine category, displacing the New England Journal of Medicine for the first time.
The JIF for Nature jumped to 69.504 in 2021 from 49.962 in 2020 in the multidisciplinary sciences category. Nature kept its top ranking for the category and is the first journal to accumulate more than 1 million citations in one year, largely driven by articles on COVID-19.
JIFs of Computer Science journals
For the subject category of Computer Science, Information System, the JIF for IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials rose to 33.840 in 2021 from 25.249 in 2020. The JIF of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology rose to 10.489 in 2021 from 4.654 in 2020 and moved to the second quartile.
For the subject Computer Science, Software Engineering, the JIF for Communications of the ACM jumped to 14.065 in 2021 from 4.654 in 2020. The JIF for IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering rose to 9.322 in 2021 from 6.226 in 2020 and moved to the 1st quartile.
JIF of Singapore journals
The JIF of Annals Academy of Medicine Singapore jumped to 8.713 in 2021 from 2.473 in 2020. This moved the journal into the first quartile of general medicine journals in JCR from its previous position in the second quartile. The JIF of Singapore Medical Journal increased to 3.331 in 2021 from 1.858 in 2020. It moved the journal from the third quartile to the second quartile for the same general medicine category.
The other journals like Singapore Economic Review and Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography saw small increases in their JIF and they stayed in the same third quartile for their subject category.
Early Access content and JIF
Another change that might affect the JIF is the continued expansion of Early Access content in calculating JIF. Counting the Early Access articles increases the number of articles in the numerator of JIF.
Journal of Applied Psychology has Early Access articles included and the JIF rose to 11.802 in 2021 from 7.429 in 2020.
Operations Research has Early Access articles included and the JIF increased slightly to 3.924 in 2022 from 3.310 in 2020.
Check out the new edition of the Journal Citation Report to see if the journals you publish in have seen significant changes in their Journal Impact Factor.
References
McVeight, M. (2022, June 21). Journal citation reports 2022: A preview. Clarivate Blog. https://clarivate.com/blog/journal-citation-reports-2022-a-preview
Quaderi, N. (2022, June 28). Journal citation reports 2022: COVID-19 research continues to drive increased citation impact. Clarivate Blog. https://clarivate.com/blog/journal-citation-reports-2022-covid-19-research-continues-to-drive-increased-citation-impact
