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).
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.
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.
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; each carries a separate JCR entry and a separate figure. 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.
Related terms
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s current 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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