Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher checking Cancer Research's current Impact Factor (22.6 per the 2024 JCR data year / 2025 release) before deciding where to submit an oncology manuscript, understanding this figure sits alongside SJR and quartile ranking rather than replacing them.
- Is an instance
A department administrator working through the worked-example calculation (total citations to the journal's prior-two-years' citable items, divided by that item count) to explain to faculty how Cancer Research, like any JCR-indexed title, arrives at its published JIF.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Confusing Cancer Research (the AACR-published peer-reviewed journal) with Cancer Research UK, the UK medical research charity -- the charity does not publish a journal and has no Journal Impact Factor.
- Not an instance
Describing a single highly cited Cancer Research article as "having" the journal's JIF -- the metric is computed at the journal level only, not attributable to one article or author, which is exactly the conflation DORA's guidance cautions against.
Editorial commentary
Cancer Research’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is the Journal Impact Factor of the flagship general-oncology journal published by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), distinct from other AACR titles (Cancer Discovery, Clinical Cancer Research) and unrelated to Cancer Research UK, the funding charity of a similar name.
This JIF is one specific instance of the general Journal Impact Factor metric Clarivate publishes annually in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR); Cancer Research has been published continuously since 1916 and receives its own separate JIF each JCR release.
What the number actually measures
The JIF is a ratio: citations received in a given year to citable items (articles and reviews) the journal published in the two preceding years, divided by the number of those citable items. Cancer Research is indexed in Clarivate’s Science Citation Index Expanded and receives a JIF on that basis, alongside a separately reported 5-year Impact Factor and a JCR quartile ranking within its assigned oncology/cancer-research categories.
Per the JCR data reflected in the journal’s public profile, Cancer Research’s Impact Factor for the 2024 JCR data year (2025 release) was 22.6. Clarivate releases updated JCR figures every June, and a journal’s JIF can move meaningfully year over year as its citation and publication volumes change — treat any specific number, including this one, as time-stamped to that release rather than a fixed property of the journal, and check the journal’s own metrics page or jcr.clarivate.com for the current figure before citing it in a formal context such as a grant application or tenure file.
Worked example
If Cancer Research published 900 citable items across 2022 and 2023, and those items collectively received 20,340 citations during 2024, the resulting 2024 JIF would be 20,340 / 900 = 22.6 — the same mechanical calculation Clarivate applies to every journal in JCR, from a single-issue society title to a large multidisciplinary journal. The arithmetic is identical regardless of field; what differs is the citation and publication volume feeding it, which is one reason JIFs are not comparable across fields with different citation norms.
Why this number alone is a poor stand-in for quality
Citation-tracking organizations including DORA and the CoARA coalition caution against using a journal-level metric like the JIF to evaluate an individual article, author, or grant applicant — a single highly cited paper in Cancer Research does not mean every article in that issue was equally cited, and the JIF says nothing about the quality or rigor of any specific piece of work. It is also field-relative (oncology citation norms differ from, say, mathematics) and sensitive to a journal’s mix of article types, so it should be read alongside other indicators — such as the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) or CiteScore — rather than in isolation.
Related terms
See the general Journal Impact Factor entry for the full mechanics of the metric. For comparison, see the JIF entries for other oncology- and biomedicine-adjacent titles: Journal of Clinical Investigation, Cell, and Nature. On alternative journal-level metrics, see SCImago Journal Rank (SJR).
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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