Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
The AAPS Journal's 2024 Journal Impact Factor of 3.7 (Clarivate JCR) reflecting citations to peer-reviewed research in pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences.
- Is an instance
AAPS regulatory science commentaries and white papers published in The AAPS Journal informing bioanalytical method validation and dissolution testing standards.
Editorial commentary
Quick answer: The AAPS Journal’s most recent Journal Impact Factor on its Springer Nature page is 3.4 (2025), with a 5-year Journal Impact Factor of 4.3 (2025). The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) journal page still lists the earlier figures, 3.7 and 4.1, for the 2024 data year. Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports is the authoritative source for the metric, so always state the data year when you cite it.
The Journal Impact Factor is a journal-level average: citations in the data year to items the journal published in the preceding two years, divided by the number of citable items from those years. It describes the journal as a whole, not the quality of any single paper.
What is The AAPS Journal?
The AAPS Journal is an official peer-reviewed journal of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), published with Springer Nature (electronic ISSN 1550-7416). It publishes findings in the pharmaceutical sciences that affect human and veterinary therapeutics. Editor-in-Chief Anurag S. Rathore, Ph.D., Institute Chair Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, oversees an international editorial board.
The AAPS journal page lists these subject areas:
- Drug Design and Discovery
- Pharmaceutical Biotechnology
- Biopharmaceutics, Formulation, and Drug Delivery
- Metabolism and Transport
- Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics, and Pharmacometrics
- Translational Research
- Clinical Evaluations and Therapeutic Outcomes
- Regulatory Science, which connects to regulatory affairs in the pharmaceutical industry and FDA guidance documents
- Pharmaceutical Analysis
Accepted article types include original research articles, reviews and mini-reviews, white papers, commentaries and editorials, letters to the editor, meeting reports, brief or technical reports, rapid communications, regulatory notes, tutorials, and protocols in the pharmaceutical sciences.
AAPS Journal impact factor and other metrics
- Journal Impact Factor: 3.4 for 2025 on the Springer Nature journal page; 3.7 for 2024 on the AAPS journal page.
- Five-year Journal Impact Factor: 4.3 for 2025 on the Springer Nature page; 4.1 for 2024 on the AAPS page.
- Downloads: 901,143 in 2024 according to the AAPS page; 1.1 million in 2025 according to the Springer Nature page.
- Abstracting and indexing: the Springer Nature page lists, among others, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Medline, Scopus, EMBASE, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), Google Scholar and Dimensions.
The two-year Journal Impact Factor for a data year divides the citations received in that year to citable items published in the previous two years by the number of citable items from those two years. The five-year version uses a five-year publication window, which suits fields where citations build slowly. For another view of journal citation performance, see CiteScore, the Scopus-based metric.
Using the AAPS Journal impact factor responsibly
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) advises against using journal-level metrics as a substitute for assessing individual research outputs.
- A journal figure is not an article figure. Citations within a journal are unevenly distributed, so the journal’s impact factor says little about any one paper in it.
- Compare within a field. Citation rates differ between fields, so comparing impact factors across disciplines without field-normalized measures is misleading.
- Judge the work itself. For tenure, grants or promotion, assess the data, methods and contribution of the paper rather than the venue.
Related terms
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF): Clarivate’s journal-level citation ratio.
- Journal Citation Reports (JCR): the annual Clarivate database that publishes JIF values.
- CiteScore: the Scopus-based journal citation metric.
- San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA): a framework that favors assessing outputs on their own merits.
- Regulatory Affairs in the Pharmaceutical Industry: discipline guide to regulatory submissions and standards.
- FDA Guidance Documents: guide to locating and citing regulatory agency guidances.
Frequently asked questions
What is the AAPS Journal impact factor?
The Springer Nature journal page shows a Journal Impact Factor of 3.4 and a 5-year Journal Impact Factor of 4.3, both for 2025. The AAPS journal page shows 3.7 and 4.1 for 2024. Cite the figure together with its data year.
Who publishes The AAPS Journal?
It is an official journal of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, published with Springer Nature.
How is the Journal Impact Factor calculated?
Clarivate divides the citations received in the data year to the journal’s citable items from the previous two years by the number of citable items published in those two years.
Can the journal’s impact factor be used to assess individual researchers?
No. DORA recommends against using journal-level metrics as a substitute for assessing individual outputs, because a journal’s citations are unevenly spread across its articles.
Sources
- American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. The AAPS Journal. https://www.aaps.org/publications-and-news/journals/the-aaps-journal. Checked 2026-11-07.
- Springer Nature. The AAPS Journal. https://link.springer.com/journal/12248. Checked 2026-11-07.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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