Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher checking The Lancet's current JCR entry against NEJM's or JAMA's separately computed JIF before comparing the relative citation impact of the general-medicine journals they are considering for a manuscript, while treating the comparison as journal-level only.
- Is an instance
A grants office noting in an internal metrics reference that The Lancet is Science Citation Index Expanded-indexed and therefore receives an annual JIF from Clarivate, distinct from Lancet family titles like The Lancet Oncology, which is indexed and scored separately.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Citing a single Lancet impact-factor figure pulled from an aggregator site as if it were the authoritative, current number without noting the JCR release year it reflects -- aggregator figures for The Lancet diverge from one another and change with each annual JCR update.
- Not an instance
Treating The Lancet Oncology's or The Lancet Neurology's Impact Factor as interchangeable with the flagship Lancet's figure -- each Lancet family title is separately indexed and receives its own distinct JIF.
Editorial commentary
The Lancet’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). The Lancet is published by Elsevier and has appeared continuously since 1823, making it one of the oldest general medical journals still in circulation. This term covers only the flagship title, The Lancet itself — the wider Lancet family includes separately edited, separately JCR-indexed specialty journals such as The Lancet Oncology, The Lancet Neurology, The Lancet Public Health, and The Lancet Digital Health, each of which receives its own distinct Impact Factor. Those family titles are not covered individually on this page.
What the number actually measures
The JIF is a ratio: citations received in a given JCR data year to a journal’s citable items (articles and reviews) published in the two preceding years, divided by the number of those citable items. The Lancet (ISSN 0140-6736 print, 1474-547X online) 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, regardless of the journal’s age, prestige, or article volume.
A note on the current figure
Third-party JCR-tracking aggregators and Wikipedia’s journal infobox report figures for The Lancet that diverge from release to release and from tracker to tracker — figures seen include roughly 88.5 attributed to the 2024 JCR data year and roughly 109.0 attributed to the 2025 data year, but different pages label similar-sounding figures inconsistently, and CASRAI has not independently reconciled these against a single primary source pulled directly from jcr.clarivate.com (which is subscription-gated) or thelancet.com’s own journal-information page 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 thelancet.com directly for the current, release-dated figure before citing it in a formal context such as a CV, grant application, or tenure file.
Worked example
If The Lancet published, say, 300 citable items across two preceding years and those items received 27,000 citations in the current JCR data year, the resulting 2-year JIF would be 27,000 ÷ 300 = 90. This is the same calculation Clarivate applies to every SCIE-indexed journal; The Lancet’s own figure moves with actual citation counts and citable-item volume each release, not with a fixed formula unique to the journal.
Why it’s so high, and what it doesn’t tell you
The Lancet’s JIF is consistently among the highest of any journal indexed by Clarivate, general-medicine or otherwise, alongside peers like the New England Journal of Medicine. A high JIF reflects that The Lancet’s published articles are, on average, cited frequently within the two-year citation window — it does not mean every individual article is highly cited, nor that articles published in The Lancet are inherently more rigorous than articles published elsewhere. Per DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) and CoARA’s responsible-assessment guidance, journal-level metrics like the JIF should not be used as a substitute for evaluating the actual content of a specific paper, or the contributions of a specific researcher, in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.
Related terms
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s current figure.
- New England Journal of Medicine’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the other leading flagship general-medicine journal’s illustrative instance, useful for direct comparison.
- 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.
See also: How to Look Up a Journal’s Impact Factor and CiteScore vs. Journal Impact Factor.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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