Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A biosketch entry citing '2024, JCI Insight (IF ~6.8, 2025 JCR release)' alongside a separate JCI entry with its own, different IF figure for the same reporting period.
- Is an instance
A research-metrics dashboard that tracks JCI and JCI Insight as two separate rows, each with its own ISSN, publisher note (both ASCI), and JIF trend line.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A CV or funder report that lists a single 'JCI Impact Factor' figure and applies it to both a JCI paper and a JCI Insight paper -- the two journals are separately indexed and separately scored, so this misattributes one journal's metric to the other's article.
Editorial commentary
JCI Insight’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a specific, illustrative instance of the general Journal Impact Factor metric that Clarivate publishes annually in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). JCI Insight is a peer-reviewed, gold open-access journal launched in 2016 by the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) as a companion title to ASCI’s flagship journal, the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI). Like every JCR-indexed title, JCI Insight receives its own separate JIF each release — a different number from JCI’s, calculated from a different citation and publication pool.
What the number actually measures
The JIF is a ratio: citations received in a given year to citable items (articles and reviews) a journal published in the two preceding years, divided by the number of those citable items. JCI Insight publishes broadly across biomedical specialties — immunology, endocrinology, oncology, cardiovascular medicine, nephrology, neuroscience, and more — with an emphasis on clinical and translational relevance, rather than the narrower, longer-established editorial scope of the flagship JCI. Because it is a newer, higher-volume open-access title (first receiving its own IF in 2018, per ASCI’s own journal-information pages), its citation profile and IF trend differ meaningfully from JCI’s, and should not be assumed to move in lockstep with it release to release.
JCI Insight vs. the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) — keep these distinct
This is the single most common confusion around this metric. JCI and JCI Insight are two separate, separately-indexed ASCI journals with two separate ISSNs and two separate JIFs:
- Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) — ASCI’s original flagship research journal, publishing since the early 20th century. ISSN 0021-9738 (print) / 1558-8238 (online). See CASRAI’s Journal of Clinical Investigation’s Journal Impact Factor entry for its figure.
- JCI Insight — ASCI’s open-access companion journal, launched 2016. ISSN 2379-3708 (online). Covered on this page.
A third, unrelated title — the European Journal of Clinical Investigation (a separate Wiley journal, also often abbreviated informally as “JCI” in casual reference) — adds a further name-collision risk. When citing a “JCI” impact factor in a CV, grant application, or bibliometric report, always specify the full journal title and publisher to avoid ambiguity between all three.
Worked examples
Example 1: A researcher preparing a biosketch lists a first-author paper in JCI Insight and wants to cite the journal’s current standing. The correct approach is to look up JCI Insight’s own JIF for the most recent JCR release — not the flagship JCI’s figure — and to note the release year, since JIFs update annually every June.
Example 2: A research office benchmarking a department’s publication venues for an internal report separates “JCI” and “JCI Insight” into two distinct rows in its tracking spreadsheet, each with its own ISSN and IF, rather than merging them as if they were the same title with one metric.
Counter-example
Treating a citation count or IF reported for “JCI” as automatically applicable to a JCI Insight paper (or vice versa) is a counter-example of correct use — the two journals are editorially and bibliometrically distinct, and conflating them produces an inaccurate metric in exactly the kind of document (tenure file, grant report) where accuracy matters most.
Why a single-number JIF is an incomplete picture
As with any journal-level metric, JCI Insight’s JIF describes the journal’s citation performance in aggregate — it does not describe the citation performance of any individual article or author published in it. Organizations including DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) caution against using journal-level metrics as a proxy for individual researcher quality in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions. See CASRAI’s general guide on how to look up a journal’s Impact Factor for the current-release lookup process, and Impact Factor vs. h-index for how journal-level and author-level metrics differ.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="JCI Insight’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF)"
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"description": "JCI Insight's Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is the annual Clarivate-calculated citation ratio published in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) for JCI Insight specifically -- the open-access companion journal launched in 2016 by the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), distinct from ASCI's flagship title, the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI). Third-party JCR-tracking aggregators report JCI Insight's most recent JIF at approximately 6.8, up from approximately 5.99 the prior release; treat these as REPORTED-tier figures corroborated across independent trackers rather than a figure CASRAI has confirmed directly against a live jcr.clarivate.com session, and always check the current release before citing a specific number in a CV, tenure file, or funder report.",
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"dateModified": "2026-07-23T05:39:01",
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