Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher comparing Cell's current JCR entry against Cell Reports' separately computed JIF before deciding which Cell Press title's scope and audience better fits a manuscript, checking each journal's own current JCR record rather than an older cached aggregator number.
- Is an instance
An author working through the mechanical calculation -- total JCR-data-year citations to Cell's prior-two-years' citable items, divided by that item count -- to explain to a tenure or grant committee how the reported figure is derived, the same formula Clarivate applies uniformly across JCR-indexed titles.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Treating a reported Cell impact factor number as interchangeable with Cell Reports' JIF because both carry the Cell Press name -- they are separately indexed journals with independently computed figures that differ by roughly an order of magnitude.
- Not an instance
Citing Cell's CiteScore (a separate Elsevier/Scopus metric with a four-year citation window) as if it were Cell's Clarivate JIF, or describing one highly cited Cell paper as "having" the journal's impact factor.
Editorial commentary
Cell’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a specific, illustrative instance of the general Journal Impact Factor metric published annually by Clarivate in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Cell is Cell Press’s founding flagship life-sciences journal, first published in 1974, and its JIF is computed and reported entirely independently of the JIF for Cell Reports — Cell Press’s separate, open-access sister journal launched in 2012 — even though both carry the Cell Press name.
What the number actually measures
The JIF is a ratio: citations received in a given year to a journal’s citable items (articles and reviews) published in the two preceding years, divided by the number of those citable items. Cell (ISSN 0092-8674) is indexed in Clarivate’s Science Citation Index Expanded and receives its own JIF on that basis, computed the same mechanical way as every other JCR-indexed title.
A note on the current figure
Third-party JCR-tracking aggregators report Cell’s 2-year JIF in the low-to-mid 40s — figures seen include roughly 42.5 for the 2024 JCR data year (2025 release) and roughly 45.1 for the 2025 JCR data year (2026 release), with a reported 5-year JIF near 48.9 and a JCR Quartile 1 placement in cell biology. These aggregator figures do not fully agree with one another even across pages on the same tracking site, which is typical when different releases or caching lags are being reflected, and Cell Press’s own metrics page (cell.com/metrics) was not independently reachable to confirm one authoritative figure at the time of writing. Treat any single number you see cited as time-stamped to a specific JCR release — Clarivate updates JCR every June — and check jcr.clarivate.com or cell.com/metrics directly for the current, release-dated figure before citing it in a formal context such as a CV, grant application, or tenure file.
Worked example
If Cell published 900 citable items across two preceding years, and those items collectively received 40,500 citations in the JCR data year, the resulting JIF would be 40,500 / 900 = 45.0 — the same arithmetic Clarivate applies to every JCR-indexed journal, from a small society title to a large flagship journal like this one. What differs is the citation and publication volume feeding the ratio, not the formula itself.
Cell vs. Cell Reports: not the same journal, not the same figure
Cell and Cell Reports are both published under the Cell Press imprint, but they are editorially and commercially distinct journals with separately computed JIFs that should never be used interchangeably. Cell is the original 1974 flagship title, subscription/hybrid, with a narrower acceptance bar and a correspondingly higher reported JIF (low-to-mid 40s per the aggregators above). Cell Reports is a newer (2012-launched), fully open-access, broader-scope journal with a reported JIF in the high-6-to-8 range across recent JCR releases — an order of magnitude lower than Cell’s. Citing one journal’s figure while referring to the other by name is a sourcing error worth double-checking before it goes into a CV or grant narrative; always confirm which specific Cell Press title’s JCR entry you are quoting.
Why this number alone is a poor stand-in for quality
Citation-tracking organizations including DORA, the CoARA coalition, and Clarivate itself caution against over-relying on a single journal-level metric to judge an individual article or researcher. A flagship journal’s JIF is heavily shaped by a small number of highly cited papers and by field-level citation norms, so the same score means different things depending on what is being compared. DORA’s core recommendation is not to eliminate the JIF, but to stop treating it as a proxy for the quality of a specific paper or the merit of an individual researcher’s work — a distinction that matters when Cell’s JIF gets cited in tenure, promotion, or grant-review contexts as if it described any one article published there, rather than the journal’s two-year citation average as a whole.
Counter-example
Cell’s CiteScore (a separate Elsevier/Scopus metric using a four-year citation window and a broader document set) is not the same figure as its Clarivate JIF, and reporting one as if it were the other is a common sourcing error. Similarly, an individual highly cited article published in Cell does not “have” the journal’s JIF — the metric is computed at the journal level, not the article level, which is precisely the conflation DORA’s guidance warns against.
Related terms
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s current figure.
- Cell Reports’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — Cell Press’s separate, open-access sister journal; not interchangeable with Cell’s own figure.
- Nature’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another single-journal illustrative instance.
- Nature Communications’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another single-journal illustrative instance.
- Scientific Reports’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another single-journal illustrative instance.
- Science Advances’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another single-journal illustrative instance.
- PLOS ONE’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another single-journal illustrative instance.
- CiteScore — Elsevier/Scopus’s competing journal-level metric, different window and denominator.
- DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) — the reform commitment behind the over-reliance caveat above.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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