Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher preparing a tenure dossier cites Molecular Cell's most recent JCR-reported JIF (in the mid-to-high teens as of the 2025 JCR data year, per third-party aggregator tracking) to contextualize where a co-authored paper appeared — correctly labeling it as the journal's two-year citation average, not a score attached to their individual article.
- Is an instance
A librarian building a subject-collection comparison pulls Molecular Cell's JIF from jcr.clarivate.com alongside Cell's and Cell Reports' figures to show the size of the gap between Cell Press's flagship, mid-tier, and open-access-broad titles — correctly treating all three as separate JCR entries rather than one shared 'Cell Press' number.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Citing Cell's JIF (low-to-mid 40s) while referring to Molecular Cell by name, or vice versa, is a sourcing error — the two are separate Cell Press journals with separately computed, non-interchangeable JIFs that happen to differ by roughly a factor of three.
- Not an instance
Treating Molecular Cell's CiteScore (a separate Elsevier/Scopus metric using a four-year citation window and a broader document set) as though it were the same figure as its Clarivate JIF is a common conflation; the two use different citation windows, different source databases, and are not directly comparable.
Editorial commentary
Molecular Cell’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). Molecular Cell (ISSN 1097-2765) is a Cell Press research journal in molecular and cell biology, launched in the late 1990s, and its JIF is computed and reported entirely independently of the JIF for Cell — Cell Press’s older, higher-JIF flagship title — and Cell Reports — Cell Press’s open-access sister journal — even though all three carry the Cell Press name.
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. Molecular Cell 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.
Molecular Cell’s Impact Factor in 2026: what the named sources actually say
Molecular Cell’s Journal Impact Factor is 16, for the 2025 JCR data year — the release Clarivate issued in June 2026. The source is Molecular Cell’s own publisher metrics panel at cell.com/molecular-cell/home, which attributes the figure on-page to “Journal Citation Reports 2025 (Clarivate Analytics, 2026)”. It appears there verbatim as “16 | 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 hedged between aggregator figures of roughly 16.6 (2024 data year) and roughly 16.0 (2025). Cell Press’s own metrics panel gives the 2025 figure as exactly 16, printed without a decimal place.
The same publisher page also shows a CiteScore of 27. 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: 1097-2765 — Crossref journal record, checked 23 August 2026.
- Publisher: Elsevier (Cell Press) — Crossref journal record, checked 23 August 2026.
- PubMed / MEDLINE: Currently indexed for MEDLINE; MEDLINE coverage v1n1, Dec. 1997- — NLM Catalog record, checked 23 August 2026.
- DOAJ: Not listed in DOAJ (subscription journal) — DOAJ API, checked 23 August 2026.
- Journal Impact Factor: 16 for the 2025 JCR data year; CiteScore 27 (a different metric — see above) — Molecular Cell’s own publisher metrics panel at cell.com/molecular-cell/home, which attributes the figure on-page to “Journal Citation Reports 2025 (Clarivate Analytics, 2026)”, retrieved 23 August 2026.
Molecular Cell’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: Cell Press’s metrics panel at cell.com/molecular-cell/home shows “16 | 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 Cell Press’s own site serves to that panel (cell.com/pb-assets/Health Advance/ux3/jbs_metrics_data_final-1751990404240.csv), whose row for Molecular Cell carries an impact factor of 16.6, a 5-year impact factor of 17.7 and an if_year of 2024. The longer series is from BioxBio (bioxbio.com/journal/MOL-CELL), a third-party JCR tracker. Cross-checks are from wos-journal.info/journalid/193 (a third-party Web of Science tracker, confirmed on the page itself to carry ISSN 1097-2765) and the Wikipedia infobox. All were read on 23 August 2026.
| JCR data year | Clarivate release | Journal Impact Factor | Attributed to, read 23 August 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | June 2026 | 16.0 | cell.com/molecular-cell/home (publisher, printed as “16”); BioxBio; wos-journal.info; Wikipedia |
| 2024 | June 2025 | 16.6 | Cell Press’s own metrics data file; BioxBio (both agree) |
| 2023 | June 2024 | 14.5 | BioxBio |
| 2022 | June 2023 | 16.0 | BioxBio |
| 2021 | June 2022 | 19.328 | BioxBio |
| 2020 | June 2021 | 17.970 | BioxBio |
| 2019 | June 2020 | 15.584 | BioxBio |
| 2018 | June 2019 | 14.548 | BioxBio |
| 2017 | June 2018 | 14.248 | BioxBio |
| 2016 | June 2017 | 14.714 | BioxBio |
| 2015 | June 2016 | 13.958 | BioxBio |
| 2014 | June 2015 | 14.018 | BioxBio |
| 2013 | June 2014 | 14.464 | BioxBio |
| 2012 | June 2013 | 15.280 | BioxBio |
Category and quartile
Clarivate assigns Molecular Cell to the Web of Science categories Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Cell Biology (both Science Citation Index Expanded). For the current release, wos-journal.info gives its percentage rank within its best-placed category as 96.3% (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 — 96.3% places it in Q1. 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 journal sits in two Web of Science categories and wos-journal.info reports only the better of the two placements, without saying which category that is. The 5-year Impact Factor, a separate figure that widens the citation window from two years to five, is 17.6 for the current release per wos-journal.info, and 17.7 for the 2024 data year in Cell Press’s own metrics data file.
The publisher contradicts itself, so here are both. The metrics panel rendered on cell.com/molecular-cell/home shows 16 for the 2025 data year, while the metrics data file that same site serves (jbs_metrics_data_final-1751990404240.csv) still carries 16.6 with an if_year of 2024 — a stale asset, not a second opinion on the current year. Read on 23 August 2026. Use 16 (2025) as the current figure and 16.6 as the prior year.
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.
Molecular Cell vs. Cell vs. Cell Reports: three separate figures
Molecular Cell, Cell, and Cell Reports are all published under the Cell Press imprint, but they are editorially and commercially distinct journals with separately computed JIFs that should never be used interchangeably. Cell is Cell Press’s original 1974 flagship title with the narrowest acceptance bar and the highest reported JIF (low-to-mid 40s per aggregator tracking). Molecular Cell sits in the middle: a more specialized, still highly selective title with a reported JIF in the mid-to-high teens — roughly a third of Cell’s figure. Cell Reports is the newest (2012-launched), fully open-access, broadest-scope title of the three, with a reported JIF in the high single digits across recent JCR releases. Citing one journal’s figure while referring to another by name is a sourcing error worth double-checking before it goes into a CV or grant narrative; always confirm which specific Cell Press title’s JCR entry you are quoting.
Why this number alone is a poor stand-in for quality
Citation-tracking organizations including DORA, the CoARA coalition, and Clarivate itself caution against over-relying on a single journal-level metric to judge an individual article or researcher. A selective specialist journal’s JIF is heavily shaped by a small number of highly cited papers and by field-level citation norms, so the same score means different things depending on what is being compared. DORA’s core recommendation is not to eliminate the JIF, but to stop treating it as a proxy for the quality of a specific paper or the merit of an individual researcher’s work — a distinction that matters when Molecular Cell’s JIF gets cited in tenure, promotion, or grant-review contexts as if it described any one article published there, rather than the journal’s two-year citation average as a whole.
Counter-example
Molecular Cell’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 Molecular Cell does not ‘have’ the journal’s JIF — the metric is computed at the journal level, not the article level, which is precisely the conflation DORA’s guidance warns against.
Related terms
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s current figure.
- Cell’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — Cell Press’s flagship title; roughly three times Molecular Cell’s reported figure.
- Cell Reports’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — Cell Press’s open-access sister journal; not interchangeable with Molecular Cell’s own figure.
- 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.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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