Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A pollution-monitoring researcher deciding between ESPR and a competing environmental-chemistry journal checks the current JCR entry for each rather than relying on a remembered figure, since JIF is recalculated and re-released annually and can move meaningfully year to year -- as ESPR's own trajectory shows.
- Is an instance
A hiring or tenure committee reviewing a candidate's ESPR publication cites the journal's JIF only as one contextual data point alongside the specific paper's own citation count, in line with DORA's recommendation against using a journal-level metric as a proxy for a single article's quality.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Treating ESPR's JIF as a fixed, permanent number is incorrect -- JCR recalculates and republishes it annually, and, as shown above, this journal's own reported figure has moved in both directions across recent release years.
- Not an instance
Using ESPR's JIF alone to judge an individual article published in the journal is a misapplication of the metric -- JIF is a journal-level average of citations to recent articles, not a per-article score; DORA and CoARA both explicitly recommend against this substitution.
Editorial commentary
The most recent well-corroborated figure for Environmental Science and Pollution Research is 5.59, for the 2024 JCR data year, released June 2025. That is the honest state of the record, and this page will say plainly why a cleaner answer is not available: at the time of writing (8 August 2026) CASRAI could not confirm a 2025-data-year figure for ESPR from either Springer’s own journal page, which sits behind an authorisation redirect, or Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports, which is subscription-gated. Treat 5.59 as the last confirmed value and expect it to have been superseded by the June 2026 release.
The 5.8 you may be remembering is from 2022
The ESPR Impact Factor rose steeply through the 2010s and then stopped moving in one direction. The published history runs roughly: 2.618 (2012), 2.757 (2013), 2.828 (2014), 2.760 (2015), 2.741 (2016), 2.800 (2017), 2.914 (2018), 3.056 (2019), 4.223 (2020), 5.190 (2021), 5.8 (2022). The 5.8 is the peak, and because it was the peak it is the number that stuck in people’s memories and in a great many cached pages. It is four data years old.
After 2022 the record gets genuinely messy. Some long-running metric trackers carry no values at all for the 2023, 2024 and 2025 data years, leaving their tables ending at 5.8; others report approximately 5.59 for the 2024 data year. That disagreement between sources is not a detail to paper over – it is precisely why you should never cite an ESPR Impact Factor without naming both the data year and where you got it.
ESPR, and the identifiers you will need
ESPR is simply the initialism for Environmental Science and Pollution Research; there is no separate journal by that name. The Web of Science abbreviated title is ENVIRON SCI POLLUT R, and in ISO 4 style it renders as Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. The ISSNs are 0944-1344 (print) and 1614-7499 (electronic). The publisher is Springer, part of Springer Nature. Searching a database under the full title when it stores the abbreviation is a routine cause of not being able to find a journal’s metrics at all.
Scope and publishing model
ESPR covers environmental chemistry, ecotoxicology, pollution monitoring and assessment, remediation, and environmental health across air, water, soil and sediment – with a longstanding emphasis on the behaviour and effects of chemical compounds in the environment. It is a hybrid journal, not a fully open-access one: authors may publish by the conventional subscription route at no charge to themselves, or choose open access after acceptance. Springer Nature listed the open-access article processing charge for the journal at GBP 2,890 / USD 4,390 / EUR 3,290 as of August 2026. Springer Nature revises APCs annually, and many authors are covered by a transformative agreement held by their institution rather than paying it directly, so check both the current rate and your institution’s agreement before assuming the cost falls on your grant.
Quartiles: check which taxonomy is being quoted
ESPR is indexed under several subject categories at once, and its quartile differs between them – commonly reported as Q1 in pollution and in health, toxicology and mutagenesis, and Q2 in environmental chemistry. Two cautions follow. First, a quartile is only interpretable next to the category it was computed in; “ESPR is Q1” with no category named is not a claim anyone can check. Second, those particular category labels come from the Scopus and SCImago Journal Rank subject taxonomy, which is a different classification system from Clarivate’s JCR categories. A SCImago quartile and a JCR quartile are not the same statement about the same journal, and they are routinely quoted as though they were.
How to establish the current figure
Go to jcr.clarivate.com through your institutional library login and read the journal’s JCR record directly – that is the metric’s only authoritative source. Failing that, Springer’s own journal page for ESPR carries the publisher-stated metrics. Use aggregator sites only as a signal that something has changed, never as the citation itself: on this journal in particular they disagree with one another and several have stopped updating altogether. The full procedure is set out in how to check a journal’s impact factor in JCR, and the ranking system is unpacked in journal impact factor and quartile rankings.
Reading a trend line responsibly
A journal whose Impact Factor doubles in a decade and then retreats is not necessarily a journal whose research got better and then worse. The JIF is a ratio, and for a large, fast-growing title the denominator – the count of citable items published in the two preceding years – often moves faster than the numerator. Growth in output can depress the ratio even while total citations rise, and a contraction in output can lift it. Field-level citation inflation, the share of citations that are self-citations, and shifts in the mix of article types all feed the same number. This is a large part of why DORA and CoARA both recommend against reading a journal-level average as a verdict on any individual paper published in it – including yours.
Related terms
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF) – the general metric this page illustrates.
- Journal Citation Reports (JCR) – where the figure is released each June.
- CiteScore – the competing Elsevier/Scopus metric, four-year window, different denominator.
- Open access journal – and why a hybrid title such as ESPR is not one.
- Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) – Clarivate’s field-normalised alternative, more robust to the volume effects above.
- Impact Factor vs h-index – journal-level versus author-level metrics.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Environmental Science and Pollution Research’s current Impact Factor?
The most recent well-corroborated figure is 5.59, for the 2024 JCR data year, released June 2025. CASRAI could not independently confirm a 2025-data-year figure as of August 2026, since Springer’s own journal page and Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports were not accessible for a direct check at that time. Treat 5.59 as the last confirmed value until a newer one is verified against the source.
What does ESPR stand for?
ESPR is simply the initialism for Environmental Science and Pollution Research — there is no separate journal by that name. Its Web of Science abbreviated title is ENVIRON SCI POLLUT R, which renders as Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. in ISO 4 style.
Why do some sources still list ESPR’s Impact Factor as 5.8?
5.8 was the journal’s peak figure, reached in the 2022 JCR data year, and it’s the number that stuck in many people’s memories and in pages that were never updated afterward. The record since then is genuinely mixed: some trackers report roughly 5.59 for the 2024 data year, while others simply stopped updating their tables after 2022 and still show 5.8. That disagreement is exactly why an ESPR Impact Factor should never be cited without naming both the data year and the source.
Is Environmental Science and Pollution Research a Q1 or Q2 journal?
Both, depending on which subject category you mean: ESPR is commonly reported as Q1 in pollution and in health, toxicology and mutagenesis, but Q2 in environmental chemistry. A quartile is only interpretable alongside the category it was computed in, and these particular labels come from the Scopus/SCImago subject taxonomy rather than Clarivate’s JCR categories, which is a different classification system.
Is Environmental Science and Pollution Research an open-access journal?
No — it is a hybrid journal, not a fully open-access one. Authors may publish through the conventional subscription route at no charge to themselves, or pay an article processing charge to make their article openly accessible after acceptance.
Where can I check ESPR’s current, authoritative Impact Factor?
The only authoritative source is the journal’s record on jcr.clarivate.com, accessed through an institutional library login. Springer’s own journal page for ESPR carries the publisher-stated metrics as a fallback. Aggregator sites should be treated only as a signal that something has changed, not as the citation itself — see CASRAI’s guide on how to check a journal’s impact factor in JCR for the full procedure.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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