ACM Computing Surveys: Impact Factor & Metrics

What is ACM Computing Surveys?

ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) is the flagship literature review and tutorial journal published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Established in 1969 (ISSN: 0360-0300, eISSN: 1557-7341), CSUR publishes comprehensive, systematic survey articles that synthesize, organize, and evaluate research across all subdisciplines of computer science, from systems and software architecture to machine learning, cryptographic protocols, and computational theory.

Unlike standard research journals that prioritize discrete empirical discoveries, CSUR focuses entirely on extensive, high-synthesis reviews that provide definitive conceptual taxonomies and survey vast bodies of published literature for active researchers and doctoral candidates.

ACM Computing Surveys impact factor and bibliographic metrics

Because comprehensive survey papers serve as foundational citations for broad subfields, ACM Computing Surveys consistently registers some of the highest journal-level citation metrics in the computational sciences:

• 2-Year Journal Impact Factor (2024 JCR data year): 30.4 (Clarivate Analytics, released June 2025). This represents an increase from 23.8 in the 2023 JCR release and 16.6 in the 2022 release.
• 5-Year Journal Impact Factor: 31.4, demonstrating sustained citation accumulation over an expanded post-publication window.
• Journal Citation Reports Rank: Ranked #1 out of 119+ journals in Clarivate’s Computer Science, Theory & Methods category, placing it securely in the first quartile (Q1).
• Scopus CiteScore: 65.2, reflecting Scopus’s 4-year citation window across indexed computing publications.
• SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): ~5.98, reflecting strong citation prestige weighted by the authority of citing sources.

How the impact factor is calculated

The Journal Impact Factor for ACM Computing Surveys is calculated by Clarivate according to a standardized mathematical formula based on a two-year citation window:

JIF (2024) = (Citations in 2024 to citable items published in 2022 and 2023) / (Total citable items published in 2022 and 2023)

In this equation:

• Citable items: Includes all peer-reviewed survey articles, systematic reviews, and tutorials. Front matter, editorials, and corrigenda are excluded from the denominator.
• Citations: Includes citations occurring in any Web of Science Core Collection indexed journal or proceeding during the target calendar year.

Because survey papers are widely cited across related fields like software engineering, data science, and artificial intelligence, CSUR’s denominator remains relatively small while its numerator benefits from cross-disciplinary citation flow.

Journal scope and editorial model

ACM Computing Surveys maintains a highly selective editorial review process overseen by an international editorial board of domain experts. Key characteristics of the journal include:

• Article types: Submissions must offer thorough conceptual synthesis, comparative taxonomies of existing techniques, identification of open challenges, and critical evaluation of conflicting methodologies. Pure bibliometric overviews or superficial keyword summaries without technical depth are rejected.
• Publication cadence: The journal publishes regular issues throughout the volume year through the ACM Digital Library.
• Authorship context: Given the exhaustive nature of CSUR surveys, papers frequently involve collaborative teams spanning academic laboratories and research institutions. For insights into how collaborative credit is evaluated in computational fields, see our guide on CS conference vs journal authorship credit.

Responsible assessment and metric cautions

While an impact factor of 30.4 highlights the high aggregate utility of ACM Computing Surveys within scholarly communication, institutional evaluators must apply responsible research assessment principles:

• DORA principles: The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) explicitly discourage using journal-level metrics as proxies for individual article quality or researcher competence in hiring, promotion, or tenure decisions.
• Review paper citation skew: Review papers naturally garner higher baseline citation counts than original research contributions because subsequent authors cite surveys as shorthand for entire problem domains. A high impact factor reflects this structural genre advantage rather than superior intrinsic validity compared to primary empirical work.
• Disciplinary nuance: In computer science, top-tier conference publications often carry greater hiring and tenure weight than journal articles. While CSUR is universally recognized as a premier archival venue, evaluators should assess the candidate’s primary technical innovations alongside review contributions.

Sources

• Association for Computing Machinery. “ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) Journal Overview.” ACM Digital Library. Read November 7, 2026. https://dl.acm.org/journal/csur
• Clarivate Analytics. “Journal Citation Reports: ACM Computing Surveys Metrics.” Web of Science Group. Read November 7, 2026. https://clarivate.com/products/scientific-and-academic-research/research-analytics-evaluation-and-management-solutions/journal-citation-reports/
• Elsevier / Scopus. “Source details: ACM Computing Surveys CiteScore and SJR.” Scopus Preview. Read November 7, 2026. https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/28601
• Declaration on Research Assessment. “DORA Core Principles and Recommendations.” Read November 7, 2026. https://sfdora.org/read/