JBC's Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

Journal of Biological Chemistry’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

The Journal of Biological Chemistry's (JBC) Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is the Clarivate-computed, journal-level citation ratio JBC receives each year in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) -- citations in the JCR data year to the journal's citable items from the two preceding years, divided by that item count. JBC (ISSN 0021-9258, e-ISSN 1083-351X) is published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) and has been in continuous publication since 1905, making it one of the longest-running biochemistry journals still active; it converted to a fully open-access model in 2021. Third-party JCR-tracking aggregators report JBC's 2-year JIF at roughly 4.1 for the 2025 JCR data year (released June 2026), up from roughly 3.76 for the 2024 data year, with a reported 5-year JIF near 4.3 and a JCR Quartile 2 placement in biochemistry and molecular biology. These aggregator figures do not always agree with one another, and ASBMB's own jbc.org site 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 jbc.org directly for the current, release-dated figure before citing it in a formal context such as a CV, grant application, or tenure file. Per DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) and CoARA guidance, this journal-level figure should not be used as a proxy for the quality of any individual article published in the journal or the merit of its authors.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 24 Aug 2026

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. JBC (ISSN 0021-9258) 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.

Journal of Biological Chemistry’s Impact Factor in 2026: what the named sources actually say

Journal of Biological Chemistry’s Journal Impact Factor is 4.1, for the 2025 JCR data year — the release Clarivate issued in June 2026. The source is JBC’s own publisher metrics panel at jbc.org, which attributes the figure on-page to “Journal Citation Reports 2025 (Clarivate Analytics, 2026)”. It appears there verbatim as “4.1 | Impact Factor”, retrieved 23 August 2026. That is the publisher restating Clarivate’s number for its own title — not a third-party JCR-tracking aggregator and not a Wikipedia infobox, either of which can lag behind or drift from the release Clarivate actually issued.

Sources disagree, so here are both. An earlier version of this page carried 4.1 as an aggregator figure with a 5-year figure near 4.3. The publisher’s own metrics panel now confirms 4.1 for the 2025 data year.

The same publisher page also shows a CiteScore of 6.9. That is Elsevier/Scopus’s metric, computed over a four-year window and a broader document set, and it is not a second opinion on the Impact Factor. Quoting the larger number as though it were the JIF is the single most common sourcing error on this metric.

Clarivate republishes the JCR every June, so this figure is current only for the 2025 data year. Re-check it at the publisher’s page or in JCR itself before putting it in a CV, tenure file, grant application or funder report — and say which data year you mean when you cite it.

What CASRAI could verify at source

ISSN: 0021-9258 (print), 1083-351X (online) — Crossref journal record, checked 23 August 2026.
Publisher: Elsevier, on behalf of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) — Crossref journal record, checked 23 August 2026.
PubMed / MEDLINE: Currently indexed for MEDLINE; MEDLINE coverage v240n5, May 1965- — NLM Catalog record, checked 23 August 2026.
DOAJ: Listed in DOAJ; record added 15 February 2021 — DOAJ API, checked 23 August 2026.
Journal Impact Factor: 4.1 for the 2025 JCR data year; CiteScore 6.9 (a different metric — see above) — JBC’s own publisher metrics panel at jbc.org, which attributes the figure on-page to “Journal Citation Reports 2025 (Clarivate Analytics, 2026)”, retrieved 23 August 2026.

JBC’s Journal Impact Factor by JCR data year

Clarivate issues a new Journal Impact Factor for every indexed title each June, so the figure is a property of a data year rather than of the journal. The series below runs most recent first, with the source named against every row and the date CASRAI read it. Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports is paywalled and CASRAI has not read it directly; rows attributed to a tracker are third-party readings of Clarivate’s release, not Clarivate’s own publication. Figures for the 2021 data year and earlier are shown to three decimal places because that is how Clarivate published them at the time; from the 2022 data year Clarivate rounds the JIF to one decimal place.

The 2025 figure is publisher-stated: JBC’s metrics panel at jbc.org shows “4.1 | Impact Factor” and attributes it on-page to “Journal Citation Reports 2025 (Clarivate Analytics, 2026)”. The 2024 figure is also publisher-stated, from the metrics data file the same platform serves (cell.com/pb-assets/Health Advance/ux3/jbs_metrics_data_final-1751990404240.csv), whose row for the Journal of Biological Chemistry carries an impact factor of 3.9, a 5-year impact factor of 4.3 and an if_year of 2024. The longer series is from BioxBio (bioxbio.com/journal/J-BIOL-CHEM), a third-party JCR tracker. Cross-checks are from wos-journal.info/journalid/11465 (a third-party Web of Science tracker, confirmed on the page itself to carry ISSN 0021-9258) and the Wikipedia article, which states an impact factor of 5.486 for 2021 citing the 2021 Journal Citation Reports. All were read on 23 August 2026.

JCR data year	Clarivate release	Journal Impact Factor	Attributed to, read 23 August 2026
2025	June 2026	4.1	jbc.org (publisher); BioxBio; wos-journal.info (all three agree)
2024	June 2025	3.9	the publisher’s own metrics data file; BioxBio (both agree)
2023	June 2024	4.0	BioxBio
2022	June 2023	4.8	BioxBio
2021	June 2022	5.486	BioxBio; Wikipedia citing 2021 JCR (both agree)
2020	June 2021	5.157	BioxBio
2019	June 2020	4.238	BioxBio
2018	June 2019	4.106	BioxBio
2017	June 2018	4.010	BioxBio
2016	June 2017	4.125	BioxBio
2015	June 2016	4.258	BioxBio
2014	June 2015	4.573	BioxBio
2013	June 2014	4.600	BioxBio
2012	June 2013	4.651	BioxBio

Category and quartile

Clarivate assigns The Journal of Biological Chemistry to the Web of Science category Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (Science Citation Index Expanded). For the current release, wos-journal.info gives its percentage rank within that category as 60.4% (read 23 August 2026). On wos-journal.info’s own stated scale — Q1 is better than 75% of the journals in the category, Q2 better than 50%, Q3 better than 25%, Q4 the rest — 60.4% places it in Q2. CASRAI has not read the quartile in Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports itself, so treat it as a tracker-derived reading of the category position, not as a quartile quoted from JCR. The 5-year Impact Factor, a separate figure that widens the citation window from two years to five, is 4.5 for the current release per wos-journal.info, and 4.3 for the 2024 data year in the publisher’s own metrics data file.

This is the one journal on this page-set that does not sit in the top quartile of its category, and the reason is the one given further down this page: JBC publishes a very large volume of original research across the whole of biochemistry rather than curating a small, highly cited selection. The falling article counts BioxBio records alongside the figures — from 4,050 items for the 2012 data year to 1,385 for 2020 — are part of the same story, and none of it is a statement about the quality of any individual paper.

Re-check any row above against the source named beside it before quoting it in a CV, tenure file, grant application or funder report, and say which JCR data year you mean. A rising or falling series says nothing about any individual paper published in a given year — the JIF is a journal-level average, for the reasons set out elsewhere on this page.

Why a large society journal’s JIF can look modest next to a selective flagship title

JBC publishes a high volume of original research across the full breadth of biochemistry and molecular biology rather than curating a small number of high-profile papers, which is a structural reason its JIF sits lower than more selective, narrowly curated journals such as Cell or Nature. A lower JIF in this context reflects editorial scope and acceptance volume as much as it reflects per-article citation performance, which is one reason DORA and CoARA both discourage using JIF alone, or across journals with very different scopes, as a proxy for research quality.

Worked example of the underlying use, and its limit

A hiring committee comparing two candidates who each published in JBC should not treat JBC’s journal-level JIF as a stand-in for either candidate’s individual contribution — the metric describes the journal’s two-year citation average as a whole, not the merit of any one article or author.

Counter-example

JBC’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 JBC does not “have” the journal’s JIF — the metric is computed at the journal level, not the article level.

Related terms

Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s current figure.
Cell’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another single-journal illustrative instance, a more selective flagship title.
Nature’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another single-journal illustrative instance.
Journal of Clinical Investigation’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another society-adjacent biomedical journal’s 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.
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) — the Clarivate publication that reports JIF annually.

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