Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
Per the Journal of Clinical Investigation's own journal-information page (jci.org/kiosks/about), its current Impact Factor is 14.3, reflecting 2025 JCR citation data (the release Clarivate published in June 2026) -- up from 13.6 for the prior release (2024 data). JCI is published by the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI); ISSN 0021-9738 (print), 1558-8238 (online).
- Is an instance
Because the JIF is a two-year citation ratio, JCI's 14.3 figure reflects citations, in the JCR data year, to the articles and reviews JCI published across the two preceding years combined -- divided by the count of those citable items -- the identical mechanical calculation Clarivate runs for every JCR-indexed title, from a single-society journal like JCI to a multidisciplinary mega-journal.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) is not the same publication as the European Journal of Clinical Investigation -- a separate, Wiley-published title with its own distinct JIF -- and the two are a common sourcing mix-up given the near-identical name. Citing one journal's Impact Factor for the other is a factual error, not a rounding difference.
- Not an instance
JCI's Impact Factor is not the same figure as JCI Insight (a companion open-access journal ASCI also publishes) -- the two are separate JCR-indexed titles with separate JIFs, despite the shared parent society and overlapping editorial scope.
- Not an instance
A single highly cited JCI article does not carry the journal's 14.3 figure as its own metric -- Impact Factor is computed at the journal level across its full two-year citable-item pool, not per article, which is exactly the conflation DORA's guidance warns against.
Editorial commentary
The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI)’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). JCI is the flagship, peer-reviewed research journal of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), publishing original biomedical and clinical research; like every JCR-indexed title, it receives its own separate JIF each release, distinct from any other journal — including similarly named ones (see Counter-example below).
Disambiguation: JCI is not JCI Insight
On its own, “JCI” means The Journal of Clinical Investigation — the journal this page covers (ISSN 0021-9738 print / 1558-8238 online). It is a separate journal from JCI Insight, the gold open-access companion title the same society (ASCI) launched in 2016 (ISSN 2379-3708). The two are separately indexed in the Journal Citation Reports and carry separate, different Impact Factors. Every figure on this page belongs to The Journal of Clinical Investigation only; if you want JCI Insight’s figure, use JCI Insight’s Journal Impact Factor instead. Substituting one journal’s number for the other is the single most common error made with these two titles.
Journal abbreviation (ISO-4 and NLM)
The ISO-4 abbreviation of The Journal of Clinical Investigation is J. Clin. Investig. The related NLM/PubMed title abbreviation, used across citation databases and reference managers, is J Clin Invest (no periods). Both refer to the same journal (ISSN 0021-9738 print, 1558-8238 online). Neither abbreviation is interchangeable with the European Journal of Clinical Investigation’s own NLM abbreviation, Eur J Clin Invest — see the disambiguation table below.
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 covers a broad span of clinical and translational medicine — from molecular mechanisms of disease through clinical trials — and has been publishing continuously since the early 20th century as ASCI’s principal research outlet. Because JCI selects for original clinical/translational research rather than operating as a high-volume multidisciplinary mega-journal, its citable-item pool is far smaller than titles like Scientific Reports or PLOS ONE, which affects how the ratio should be read: a smaller denominator makes the resulting figure more sensitive to a handful of highly cited papers in any given data year.
Current figure — treat as time-stamped, not fixed
According to the Journal of Clinical Investigation’s own journal-information page (jci.org/kiosks/about), its current Impact Factor is 14.3, reflecting the JCR release based on 2025 citation data (published by Clarivate in June 2026) — up from approximately 13.6 for the prior release (2024 data). This is a primary-source figure (the journal’s own page), not a third-party aggregator estimate, but as with any JCR title it is still only current as of that specific annual release: Clarivate updates JCR every June, so confirm the live figure directly at jci.org or jcr.clarivate.com before citing it in a formal context such as a CV, grant application, or promotion dossier.
Impact Factor by JCR data year
| JCR data year | Clarivate release | Journal Impact Factor |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | June 2026 | 14.3 |
| 2024 | June 2025 | 13.6 (prior release; JCI’s own page now shows only the current figure, so verify this one in JCR before citing it) |
A 5-Year Impact Factor — a separate figure that widens the citation window to five years instead of two — exists for JCR-indexed titles including JCI, but the journal’s own information pages currently publish only the two-year figure above, so CASRAI does not state a five-year number here rather than repeat an unverifiable one; look it up directly in jcr.clarivate.com if you need it. This table lists only the two most recent data years because those are the only figures the journal’s own primary-source pages currently publish; for a full historical run of JCI’s JIF across earlier releases, consult jcr.clarivate.com directly rather than a third-party aggregator.
Worked example
If JCI published roughly 350 citable items (articles and reviews) across its two preceding data years combined, and those items collectively received about 5,000 citations in the JCR data year, the resulting JIF would be 5,000 / 350 ≈ 14.3 — the same mechanical calculation Clarivate applies to every JCR-indexed journal regardless of field or size. What differs across journals is the scale of the numerator and denominator, not the arithmetic itself; a society journal like JCI, with a comparatively small annual output of original research articles, reaches a given JIF value through far fewer citable items than a high-volume mega-journal would need to reach the same number.
“JCI” as a journal vs. “JCI” as a Clarivate metric
A separate source of confusion: Clarivate also uses “JCI” as the standard abbreviation for its Journal Citation Indicator, a field-normalized citation metric introduced in JCR in 2021 and reported alongside the Journal Impact Factor for every indexed title. The Journal Citation Indicator is not specific to The Journal of Clinical Investigation — every JCR journal has its own Journal Citation Indicator value, the same way every journal has its own JIF. If “JCI” appears in a bibliometrics or JCR context without a journal name attached, confirm which of the two — the journal, or Clarivate’s metric — is actually meant before citing a figure.
Why this number alone is a poor stand-in for quality
Research-assessment reform initiatives including DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) and the CoARA coalition caution against using any single journal-level metric — including a well-regarded clinical-research journal’s JIF — as a proxy for the quality of an individual article or the merit of an individual researcher’s body of work. This matters in practice for JCI specifically because its selective, clinically focused editorial scope already signals a baseline of research quality independent of the JIF; citing the journal-level number as if it described a specific paper published there adds no additional information and can misrepresent what was actually evaluated in peer review.
Counter-example
The Journal of Clinical Investigation is not the European Journal of Clinical Investigation — a separate, Wiley-published title covering a related but distinct scope, with its own independent JIF — and conflating the two because of the near-identical name is a genuine, recurring sourcing error, not a rounding difference. JCI is also distinct from JCI Insight, a companion open-access journal ASCI publishes alongside it (ISSN 2379-3708); each carries a separate JCR entry and a separate figure, and neither journal’s number may be substituted for the other’s. Separately, JCI’s Impact Factor is not interchangeable with CiteScore (a different Elsevier/Scopus metric using a four-year citation window and a broader document set) — reporting one as the other is a common but avoidable citation error.
| Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) | European Journal of Clinical Investigation (EJCI) | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) | Wiley, on behalf of the European Society for Clinical Investigation |
| ISSN | 0021-9738 (print) / 1558-8238 (online) | 0014-2972 |
| NLM abbreviation | J Clin Invest | Eur J Clin Invest |
| Recent JCR Impact Factor | 14.3 (2025 data) | approximately 3.6 (2024 data, aggregator-reported — confirm directly at onlinelibrary.wiley.com before citing formally) |
Despite the near-identical name, JCI and EJCI are unrelated journals from different societies and publishers, each with its own distinct JCR entry. Searches for “european journal of clinical investigation impact factor” or “eur j clin invest impact factor” refer to the Wiley title in this table, not to The Journal of Clinical Investigation covered by the rest of this page.
Related terms
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s current figure.
- JCI Insight’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the separate ASCI open-access companion journal that is routinely confused with this one, with its own separate figure.
- Scientific Reports’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — a contrasting example from a high-volume, multidisciplinary mega-journal.
- 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.
- Impact Factor vs. h-index — comparing this journal-level metric against an author-level one.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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