Journal of the American Chemical Society Impact…

Journal of the American Chemical Society Impact Factor (JACS JIF)

The Journal of the American Chemical Society impact factor is the Clarivate Journal Impact Factor of JACS: citations in a JCR year to items published in the prior two years, divided by citable items in those years. ACS states 16.6 for the 2025 data year.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 7 Nov 2026

What is the impact factor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society?

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a Clarivate metric, so the authoritative figure for any JACS year is the one in Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which is a subscription product. The publisher restates it: for the 2025 data year ACS gives 16.6. Searches for “journal of american chemistry society impact factor” are looking for this same number.

Third-party sites often show a different figure for JACS, such as 15.6. These differences usually reflect different JCR years: each June Clarivate issues a new release, and aggregators lag. Always name the data year next to the number.

What does the journal impact factor measure?

The JIF measures how often a journal’s recent items are cited, averaged across the journal. Clarivate describes it as a single journal-level measurement that should not be considered in isolation, and it advises against using it as a measure of anything other than the scholarly impact of a journal.

How is the impact factor calculated?

For a given JCR year, the JIF is the number of citations received in that year to items the journal published in the previous two years, divided by the number of citable items (articles and reviews) published in those two years. For the 2025 JIF this means citations in 2025 to items from 2023 and 2024, divided by the citable items from 2023 and 2024.

The calculation is asymmetric. The numerator counts citations to all item types the journal published, while the denominator counts only citable items. A JIF “without self-citations” is reported separately by Clarivate. Clarivate documents which document types are included on its support centre (supportcenter.clarivate.com, article on document types included in the impact factor calculation).

How can I calculate my own impact factor?

The JIF is defined for journals, not for researchers or papers, so there is no personal “impact factor” in the JCR sense. Author-level indicators such as the h-index are separate metrics with their own definitions. You can reproduce a journal’s JIF only if you have the citation counts and the citable-item counts that Clarivate uses, which is why the figure is normally read from JCR rather than recomputed.

Is an impact factor of 3.7 or 7.7 good?

There is no universal threshold. A JIF is only interpretable against other journals in the same field and the same JCR year, because citation habits differ widely between disciplines. A value that is low for chemistry can be high for another field. Compare a journal with others in its JCR subject category in the same release, not with a fixed number. The 16.6 reported for JACS is a statement about JACS in 2025, not a benchmark for other journals.

Is the ACS journal prestigious?

ACS describes JACS as the most cited journal in chemistry, based on its own reading of the JCR data. That is the publisher’s claim and a citation-volume statement; it is not a quality judgement on individual papers, and CASRAI does not rank journals.

What are SNIP and other journal metrics?

Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) is a different metric from the JIF. It comes from the Scopus and CWTS family of indicators and adjusts citation counts for differences in citation practice between fields. CiteScore is Elsevier’s Scopus-based counterpart to the JIF and uses a four-year window. CASRAI does not quote a JACS SNIP or CiteScore value here because it has not read one at source. Related ACS and chemistry titles are covered in ACS Nano impact factor and Journal of Biological Chemistry impact factor.

Where can I find a list of journal impact factors?

The official source is Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports (clarivate.com, JCR page), which most university libraries subscribe to. Publishers such as ACS also post the JIF on their journal pages or metrics announcements. For another journal, such as the Journal of the Chinese Chemical Society, look up its JIF the same way and cite the data year.

Cautions when using the JACS impact factor

Clarivate states the JIF is not a measure of a specific paper and should not be used irresponsibly to evaluate individual articles and researchers.
Quote the number with its data year and source (Clarivate JCR 2025, as stated by ACS).
Compare only within a field and release.

Sources: ACS journal metrics 2026; Clarivate Journal Citation Reports; both read 7 November 2026.

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