Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher checking Nature Communications' current 2-year JIF (18.1 per the 2025 JCR data year, sourced from Nature Portfolio's own page) before deciding where to submit a manuscript, understanding this figure sits alongside CiteScore rather than replacing it.
- Is an instance
A librarian working through the worked-example calculation (total citations to the journal's prior-two-years' citable items, divided by that item count) to explain to faculty how any journal -- Nature Communications included -- arrives at its published JIF.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Citing Nature Communications' CiteScore (a separate Elsevier/Scopus metric, four-year window) as if it were the journal's Clarivate JIF -- they are different metrics from different organizations with different windows and denominators.
- Not an instance
Describing a single highly cited Nature Communications article as "having" the journal's JIF -- the metric is computed at the journal level only, not attributable to one article or author, which is exactly the conflation DORA's guidance cautions against.
Editorial commentary
Nature Communications’ 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). Like every JCR-indexed title, Nature Communications receives its own separate JIF — it is not the same figure as its sister journal Nature, or any other title in the Nature Portfolio — and that figure changes with each annual JCR release.
What the number actually measures
The JIF is a ratio: citations received in a given year to citable items (articles and reviews) the journal published in the two preceding years, divided by the number of those citable items. Nature Communications, an open-access, multidisciplinary journal published by Springer Nature since 2010, is indexed in Clarivate’s Science Citation Index Expanded and receives a JIF on that basis.
Current figure — sourced directly from Nature Portfolio, not an aggregator
As published on Nature Communications’ own journal-impact page, nature.com/ncomms/journal-impact, the journal’s 2-year Impact Factor is 18.1 and its 5-year Impact Factor is 18.9, both for the 2025 JCR data year (the JCR release covering that data year is issued each June; the 2025-data-year figures were released in June 2026) — consistent with its standing as one of the most highly cited multidisciplinary science journals in Clarivate’s JCR categories. This figure is Nature Portfolio’s own republication of the Clarivate/JCR number for its journal, not a figure taken from a third-party JCR-tracking aggregator; those secondary sources can lag behind the current release or mislabel which JCR data year a figure belongs to. Last verified directly against nature.com/ncomms/journal-impact: August 16, 2026. Clarivate releases updated JCR figures every June; treat any specific number, including this one, as time-stamped to that release rather than a fixed property of the journal, and check nature.com/ncomms/journal-impact directly for the current figure before citing it in a formal context.
Worked example
If Nature Communications published 8,000 citable items across the two preceding years, and those items collectively received 144,800 citations during the JCR data year, the resulting JIF would be 144,800 / 8,000 = 18.1 — the same mechanical calculation Clarivate applies to every journal in JCR, from a single-issue society title to a large multidisciplinary journal like this one. The arithmetic is identical regardless of field or journal size; what differs is the citation and publication volume feeding it.
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 large multidisciplinary journal’s JIF is heavily shaped by a small number of highly cited papers and by field-level citation norms (life sciences and physics articles accumulate citations faster than mathematics or some social-science subfields), 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 using 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 Nature Communications’ relatively high 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
Nature Communications’ CiteScore (a separate Elsevier/Scopus metric using a four-year citation window and a broader document set) is not the same figure as its JIF, and reporting one as if it were the other is a common sourcing error. Similarly, an individual highly cited article published in Nature Communications 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.
- CiteScore — Elsevier/Scopus’s competing journal-level metric, different window and denominator.
- h-index — an author-level metric, not a journal-level one.
- DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) — the reform commitment behind the over-reliance caveat above.
- DORA signatory
- DORA vs CoARA — comparing the two major research-assessment reform frameworks.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Nature Communications’ current Journal Impact Factor?
Per Nature Portfolio’s own page (nature.com/ncomms/journal-impact), Nature Communications’ 2-year Impact Factor is 18.1 and its 5-year Impact Factor is 18.9, both for the 2025 JCR data year (JCR release published June 2026). Clarivate updates JCR figures every June, so treat any specific number as time-stamped to that release and check the journal’s own page before citing it in a formal context. Last verified against that page: August 16, 2026.
Is “IF” the same thing as JIF for Nature Communications?
Yes — “IF” is simply the common shorthand for Journal Impact Factor (JIF), the same Clarivate/JCR metric described on this page. It is not a different or separate score.
Is Nature Communications’ Impact Factor the same as its CiteScore?
No. CiteScore is a separate Elsevier/Scopus metric that uses a four-year citation window and a broader set of source documents, unlike the JIF’s two-year window and citable-items denominator. Reporting one figure as if it were the other is a common sourcing error.
How is Nature Communications’ Journal Impact Factor calculated?
The Journal Impact Factor is a ratio: citations received in a given year to citable items (articles and reviews) the journal published in the two preceding years, divided by the number of those citable items. Clarivate applies this same mechanical calculation to every journal indexed in JCR, including Nature Communications.
Does an individual article in Nature Communications “have” the journal’s Impact Factor?
No. The JIF is computed at the journal level, not the article level, so a single highly cited paper does not inherit or carry the journal’s score. DORA’s guidance specifically warns against using a journal-level metric like this one as a proxy for the quality of an individual article or researcher.
How often does Nature Communications’ Impact Factor change?
It can change every year: Clarivate releases updated JCR figures annually, each June, so the current figure is specific to that year’s release rather than a fixed, permanent property of the journal.
Where should this figure be verified?
Directly against Nature Communications’ own journal-impact page at nature.com/ncomms/journal-impact, or against Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports (jcr.clarivate.com, institutional-subscription access). Third-party JCR-tracking aggregators and Wikipedia infoboxes can lag behind the current release or mislabel the data year a figure belongs to, which is why this page cites the publisher directly.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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