JAMA Network Open’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

JAMA Network Open’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). It is its own, separately computed JCR entry — distinct from the flagship JAMA journal’s JIF, even though both are published by the American Medical Association (AMA) under the JAMA Network umbrella. The two figures should never be quoted interchangeably; a citation, CV, or grant narrative that says “JAMA’s impact factor” when the underlying article actually appeared in JAMA Network Open is citing the wrong number.

Not the same journal as JAMA

JAMA Network Open launched in 2018 as an open-access, continuously published general-medicine journal within the JAMA Network — the family of journals published by the AMA that also includes the flagship JAMA (a subscription-model weekly) and more than a dozen specialty JAMA titles (JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Oncology, JAMA Pediatrics, and others). Where the flagship JAMA curates a relatively small weekly selection across general medicine, JAMA Network Open publishes open access at much higher volume across essentially all areas of clinical and health-services research, without the weekly-issue constraint. That structural difference — open access, higher volume, continuous publication versus a curated weekly print-style journal — is a large part of why the two journals’ citation profiles, and therefore their JIFs, diverge and must be tracked separately.

What the number actually measures

The JIF is a ratio: citations received in a given JCR data year to citable items (articles and reviews) the journal published in the two preceding years, divided by the number of those citable items. JAMA Network Open has been JCR-indexed since shortly after its 2018 launch and now publishes several thousand articles a year across specialties including internal medicine, oncology, cardiology, psychiatry, health policy, and public health.

Current figure — hedge before citing

Third-party JCR-tracking services report JAMA Network Open’s 2024 JCR data-year Impact Factor (2025 release) at approximately 10.5, and a 2025 data-year figure (JCR 2026 release, issued June 2026) at approximately 11.7, placing the journal in JCR Quartile 1 among general and internal medicine titles. CASRAI could not independently confirm either figure directly against the journal’s own site or jcr.clarivate.com at the time this entry was written. Treat both numbers as reported, not CASRAI-verified, and check JAMA Network Open’s own journal page or jcr.clarivate.com directly for the current, authoritative figure before citing one in a formal context such as a CV, grant application, or tenure file. Do not substitute the flagship JAMA’s JIF for JAMA Network Open’s, or vice versa — confirm you are looking at the correct journal’s JCR entry, since both share the JAMA name and are frequently confused in casual citation.

Worked example (illustrative, not the journal’s real figures)

Using round, hypothetical numbers rather than JAMA Network Open’s actual annual citation and publication counts: if a journal published 4,000 citable items across the two preceding years, and those items received 44,000 citations in the JCR data year, the resulting JIF would be 44,000 / 4,000 = 11.0. This is the same mechanical calculation Clarivate applies to every JCR-indexed title, including JAMA Network Open and the flagship JAMA separately — what varies between them is the citation and publication volume feeding it, not the arithmetic.

Why this number alone is a poor stand-in for quality

Citation-tracking and assessment-reform organizations including DORA and the CoARA coalition caution against over-relying on a single journal-level metric to judge an individual article or researcher. DORA’s core recommendation is not to eliminate the JIF, but to stop using it as a proxy for the quality of a specific paper or the merit of an individual researcher’s work. This applies equally to JAMA Network Open: a high journal-level JIF describes the journal’s aggregate citation performance across thousands of articles a year, not the significance of any one paper published in it.

Counter-example

JAMA Network Open’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 — the same error researchers make when they quote the flagship JAMA’s JIF for a JAMA Network Open article, or vice versa. All three figures (JAMA’s JIF, JAMA Network Open’s JIF, and either journal’s CiteScore) come from different computations and should be sourced and cited separately.

Related terms

• Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s reported figure.
• PLOS ONE’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — a comparable open-access, high-volume journal’s own reported JIF entry.
• Nature Medicine’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — a curated (non-megajournal) comparison point in clinical/translational medicine.
• CiteScore vs. Journal Impact Factor — how the two metric families differ in methodology.
• DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) — guidance against using journal-level metrics as a proxy for individual article or researcher quality.