The Upcoming Journal Citation Reports Release and Changes to Uphold Research Integrity in 2025
We are excluding citations to and from retracted content in the 2024 Journal Impact Factor to support research integrity.
As we make the final preparations for the annual release of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and celebrate 50 years of JCR data, we continue our commitment to transparency and research integrity by introducing a small but important policy change. With this year’s JCR data, the JIF calculation and related metrics* will now exclude citations to and from retracted and withdrawn content.
Because the current volume of retractions is low in comparison to the overall volume of publication output, this change has no impact on the 2024 JIF or category rankings and quartiles for most journals. However, the increasing number of retractions and reduced time to retract content in recent years, make it critical to treat these kinds of citations with caution.
What the changes mean for the JIF calculation
The policy change means that all citations to content that is retracted or withdrawn in the JCR data will no longer count towards the numerator of the JIF. This is a prospective policy change starting with the 2024 data.
This is how the JIF will be calculated:
Two simple examples below illustrate how the policy will be applied. The examples show how the overall volume of citations in the numerator plays a role in whether the excluded citations to and from retracted content will change the JIF:
For Journal A, two citations excluded out of ten represent a significant percentage of the citations in the numerator and does change the JIF.
For Journal B, four citations excluded out of 4810 is a much smaller percentage of the citations and does not change the JIF.
A preview of the data within the Journal Citation Reports
A preview confirms that of the 4.5+ million citations that will contribute to the 2024 data, roughly 50,000 citations will be excluded with this new policy across all years, including total citations and 5-Year JIF metrics, and only around 22,000 (0.5%) will be excluded for the JIF calculation specifically.
Looking at all journals in this year’s JCR, around 2,000 (10%) will have some citations removed. However, only 1% will see an impact to their JIF, with the remainder having no change to their JIF at all.
Of the 1% of journals where there will be a change in JIF, the majority will change less than 10%, with 50% seeing a decline of 3% or less.
Understanding the meaning of a change in any given journal’s JIF requires additional context. Many publishers, researchers and other users will also want to know how a JIF change affects a journal’s rank and quartile within its category or categories.
For the 1% of journals that will have a JIF change as a result of the new retraction policy, over 50% have changed rank by 2 or fewer positions. Across all categories, there are 24 instances where a journal has moved in the quartiles: 23 journals changed quartile in 1 category, and 1 journal changed quartile in 2 categories. Of these 24 quartile changes, ~21% represent a shift from Q1 to Q2, 54% a shift from Q2 to Q3, and 25% a shift from Q3 to Q4.
Key takeaways
Here are the highlights of what to expect as a result of our policy change:
- 10% of journals in the JCR have citations to or from retracted content affecting their numerator, but only 1% have a change in JIF.
- Of that 1%, most journals moved 2 or fewer rank positions within their category ranking, and very few journals changed quartile.
We expected a small volume of changes this year. The combination of low volumes and long lead times for retractions means that citations to and from retracted content represent a tiny contribution to JIF calculations.
This change marks the continued evolution of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) from a journal-level marker of scholarly impact in the sciences and social sciences to a journal-level marker of both impact and trust across all disciplines. Our new policy is intended to proactively safeguard against citations to and from retracted content contributing to widespread distortions in the JIF. We are reinforcing our commitment to maintaining research integrity in the scientific record and ensuring that the JIF remains a transparent marker of trust for the next 50 years to come.
Explore all our blogs about Journal Citation Reports.
* JIF related metrics include the JIF, JIF without self-citations, 5 Year JIF, and Immediacy Index
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