Clarivate Plc, a leading global provider of transformative intelligence, today released the 2024 update to the Journal Citation Reports™ (JCR™). The reports provide an essential and comprehensive resource of high-quality journals, ranked by field to enable academic institutions, researchers and publishers to gauge the significance of journals in the global research landscape. Changes to journal rankings include the addition of the Emerging Sources Citation Index.
Only journals that have met the rigorous quality standards for inclusion in the Web of Science Core Collection™ are featured within the Journal Citation Reports, to ensure that users can confidently rely on the information and descriptive data provided. The annual reports provide a rich array of publisher–independent data, metrics and analysis to enhance user understanding of journal performance, including the widely recognized Journal Impact Factor™ (JIF™) and the Journal Citation Indicator™.
This year, for the first time, the JCR includes unified rankings across subject categories. There will no longer be separate JIF rankings for the nine subject categories that are indexed in multiple editions. Now those journals will receive a single ranking in their subject category, and the separate rankings will be eliminated. For example, a psychiatry journal listed in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)™ and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)™ will now be ranked in one unified Psychiatry ranking rather than two.
Key highlights for the 2024 release:
- The JCR has been enhanced to provide an easier and more complete user experience. It includes the integration of journals from the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in the new unified category rankings.
- Coverage of more than 21,800 journals – including ~5,800 journals which publish all their content via open access.
- Scholarly journals from 113 countries, across 254 categories are recognized and receive a JIF. This includes 14,090 science journals, 7,321 social science journals and 3,304 arts & humanities journals.
- 544 journals receive a Journal Impact Factor for the first time.
Dr. Nandita Quaderi, Senior Vice President & Editor-in-Chief, Web of Science, Clarivate, said: “The creation of unified rankings is part of a series of policy changes we have made to support research integrity and help level the global playing field by making the JIF a marker of trust as well as scholarly impact. Last year we extended the JIF to include ESCI journals. This year by ranking ESCI journals alongside all other journals in the same subject category we are sending another strong signal that all trustworthy journals – including newer journals and those with a niche or regional focus – should be valued and given consideration, regardless of how highly cited they are.”
Emmanuel Thiveaud, Senior Vice President, Research and Analytics, Academia & Government at Clarivate said: “For nearly half a century, the global research community has relied on the annual Journal Citation Reports to confidently identify leading and trusted journals in their fields. This year’s enhancements are designed to address the evolving needs of our customers and the unified rankings across subject categories will enhance their ability to evaluate the performance of journals.”
To explore all available data, metrics and analysis visit the Journal Citation Reports.
