Last month, Clarivate released the Journal Citation Reports 2022, which compiles a wide range of metrics to evaluate a journal’s influence. For nearly half a century, this unbiased data has been used by researchers, academic institutions, funders and other stakeholders to assess journal performance, shape their publishing strategy, and understand global citation trends. With the Clarivate Journal Citation Reports you can assess the world’s leading journals and publisher-neutral data to inform your publishing strategy. If you’re new to academia, here’s everything you need to know about the Journal Citation Reports 2022.
About the Clarivate Journal Citation Reports
The Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2022), sheds light on a journal’s role in scholarly literature by analyzing who is using the journal and how frequently they are citing it. First presented as an extension to the Science Citation Index in 1975, it was meant to be used to study journal citation trends.1 The Clarivate Journal Citation Reports has since evolved and today offers a multi-dimensional view of journal performance, taking into account both quantitative and qualitative data. The publisher-neutral report is based on journals listed in the Web of Science Core Collection and is subject to strict quality controls and editorial vigilance to ensure data integrity. This allows users to check and compare journals across research fields and take the right decisions in an evolving academic publishing landscape.
Overview of Journal Citation Reports 2022
This year’s edition is based on the 2021 data from the Web of Science Core Collection. It uses 28 key criteria2 to accurately evaluate publications and present journal impact factors and rankings across categories and global citation trends. The Journal Citation Reports 2022 covered more journals, included citations to early access content, and reflected the significant impact COVID-19 has had on scholarly publishing.3 “Through the carefully selected and curated data within the Journal Citation Reports, we can fully appreciate and understand the enormous impact of the academic community’s rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Dr Nandita Quaderi, Editor-in-Chief and Vice President Editorial at Web of Science.4
Journal Citation Reports 2022: Top highlights
Number of publications: The 2022 Journal Citation Reports expanded its reach, covering more than 21,000 journals across 254 research categories and 114 countries. This includes 12,828 science journals, 6,691 social science journals, 3,092 arts and humanities journals, and 5,300 Gold Open Access journals.2
Citations included: The 2022 Journal Citation Reports included 2.7 million citable articles and reviews, 145 million cited references and 35,000 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection.3
Journal intelligence metrics: The Journal Citation Reports 2022 allows users to evaluate a journal by category or rank using various metrics4 including:
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF): The key metric used to evaluate journals across the world, the JIF is calculated by dividing the total citations a journal receives in a year by the total number of citable items published in the journal in the previous two years.
- Journal Citation Indicator (JCI): Introduced in 2021, the JCI takes into account variations in citation and publication frequencies across research fields over three years. All the journals in the Web of Science Core Collection get a JCI, even those who do not currently have a JIF score.
- Immediacy Index: This key metric shows how many citations a journal received in a year for articles published within the same year.
The Journal Citation Reports 2022 also provide visualizations and descriptive data (top regions, leading institutions, access type, etc.)4 that can be used to track global journal citation trends.
New journals recognized: 192 journals earned a spot among the world’s leading publications when they received a JIF score for the very first time this year.4
JIF suppression: Three journals with irregular citation patterns had their JIFs suppressed in the Journal Citation Reports 2022 to eliminate inaccuracies and distortion of data.5 Anomalies in citation trends are seen when articles in a journal excessively cite other articles from the same journal (journal self-citation) or when articles from one journal largely cite items from another journal and vice versa (citation stacking). Clarivate also warned six journals about journal self-stacking, a new kind of citation distortion where most of the journal’s citations within the JIF window are to its own articles.6
The COVID-19 effect: Journals in medicine, immunology, public health, infectious diseases, critical care, and biomedical sciences continued to see a rise in citation impact this year.6
- Nature, which is the first journal to record over a million citations in a year, published 16 items that garnered over 500 citations; 12 of these were focused on COVID-19 research.
- Three of the 10 articles with the highest citations in 2021 appeared in The Lancet and all three were directly related to COVID-19 research.
- The seven journals that achieved a JIF of over 100 for the first time, all published large amounts of COVID-19 related research.
“The effects of this pandemic will continue to be seen in the literature and citation impact for decades, particularly under the lens of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 3 on Health and Wellbeing,” says Dr Quaderi, adding “We are proud to support the research community and the UN SDGs with expertly curated data that informs decisions and helps them accelerate the pace of innovation.”4
References
- McVeigh, M. Learning from history: Understanding the origin of the JCR. Clarivate https://clarivate.com/blog/learning-history-understanding-origin-jcr/ (2018)
- Clarivate. Web of Science Journal Citation Reports 2022 Infographic. Web of Science Group https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/web-of-science-journal-citation-reports-2022-infographic/.
- McVeigh, M. Journal Citation Reports 2022: A preview. Clarivate https://clarivate.com/blog/journal-citation-reports-2022-a-preview/ (2022).
