Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A university library's collection-development committee cites ACS Nano's JIF, alongside its JCR quartile and category rank, when comparing subscription value across nanoscience titles.
- Is an instance
A bibliometrics office reports ACS Nano's JIF as one data point in a departmental research-output review, alongside CiteScore and category-normalized citation counts, rather than as the sole indicator.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Using ACS Nano's JIF to judge the quality or rigor of a specific paper published in the journal.
- Not an instance
Comparing ACS Nano's JIF directly against a journal in an unrelated field (e.g. a humanities journal) as if the numbers were on the same scale.
Editorial commentary
ACS Nano is a nanoscience and nanotechnology journal published by the American Chemical Society (ACS), publishing continuously since 2007. Like any Clarivate-indexed journal, it receives an annual Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) — the same two-year, citations-over-citable-items calculation used for every journal in the JIF system. See the general Journal Impact Factor entry for how the metric itself is computed and why it should not be used to judge individual articles or authors.
Current reported figure
Aggregator trackers that mirror Clarivate’s JCR data (bioxbio.com, resurchify.com, wos-journal.info) report ACS Nano’s Impact Factor at approximately 16.0 for the 2024 JCR data year (the release published in 2025), with a reported 5-year JIF in a similar 16-17 range. Wikipedia’s infobox for the journal, sourced to JCR, lists a prior figure of 15.8 for the 2023 data year — consistent with the trend the aggregators describe. A small amount of cross-tracker disagreement exists (individual aggregator pages cite figures ranging roughly 15.9-17.3 for what is nominally the same data year), which is common for JIF figures relayed through secondary trackers rather than pulled directly from a live jcr.clarivate.com subscription. CASRAI has not independently confirmed the exact figure against a live Clarivate JCR subscription this session; treat the ~16.0 figure as reported/secondary-source-corroborated rather than primary-verified, and confirm the current-year number directly with Clarivate or your institution’s JCR access before citing it in a formal document.
Where to verify it yourself
- Clarivate Journal Citation Reports (jcr.clarivate.com) — the authoritative source; requires an institutional subscription.
- ACS’s own journal page for ACS Nano (pubs.acs.org) — publisher-provided journal information, though ACS does not always surface the current JIF prominently on the public page.
- Independent trackers (bioxbio.com, resurchify.com, wos-journal.info and similar sites) republish JCR-derived figures and are useful for a quick check, but as the discrepancy above shows, they can disagree with each other and lag the official release — use them as a starting point, not a citable source of record.
See the companion guide How to Look Up a Journal’s Impact Factor (and What It Actually Tells You) for the general lookup process.
Journal profile
- Publisher: American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Scope: Nanoscience and nanotechnology, spanning chemistry, physics, materials science, engineering, and biology at the nanoscale.
- First published: 2007
- ISSN: 1936-0851 (print), 1936-086X (online)
- JCR category: Chemistry, Multidisciplinary / Nanoscience & Nanotechnology (Q1 in recent JCR releases per the trackers cited above)
Why the exact number keeps shifting
Three things routinely change a journal’s reported JIF year to year, and ACS Nano is not an exception: (1) Clarivate releases a new JCR every June, covering a new two-year citation window, so last year’s figure is never the current one; (2) aggregator sites update on their own schedules and sometimes retain a stale figure past a new release; (3) since the 2023 JCR release, JIFs are assigned to all Web of Science Core Collection journals rather than only Science/Social Science Citation Index titles, which changed how some adjacent nanoscience journals entered comparison — worth knowing if you’re benchmarking ACS Nano against a title that only recently became JIF-eligible.
Frequently asked questions
What is ACS Nano’s current Impact Factor?
Aggregator trackers place it at approximately 16.0 for the 2024 JCR data year (2025 release); confirm the live figure against Clarivate’s JCR directly for anything formal, since secondary trackers show some disagreement (see above).
Is ACS Nano a good journal to use for evaluating a researcher?
Its JIF measures journal-level average citedness, not the quality of any individual article or author. Bodies including DORA specifically caution against using any journal-level metric, including ACS Nano’s, as a proxy for an individual researcher’s contribution.
How does ACS Nano’s JIF compare to CiteScore?
JIF (Clarivate, two-year citation window, JCR-indexed journals only) and CiteScore (Elsevier/Scopus, four-year window, broader journal coverage) are computed differently and will not match for the same journal. See CiteScore vs Impact Factor for the full comparison.
Related terms
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric definition
- CiteScore — Elsevier’s competing journal-metric
- DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) — the responsible-metrics framework cautioning against JIF misuse
- Impact Factor vs h-index
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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