PLOS Pathogens’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

PLOS Pathogens’ 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, PLOS Pathogens receives its own separate JIF that changes with each annual JCR release — but PLOS Pathogens’ identity as a selective, subject-specific PLOS title focused on infectious-disease research, rather than a broad-scope flagship or a multidisciplinary megajournal, shapes what that number actually represents.

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. PLOS Pathogens launched in September 2005 as the fifth journal of the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and has been JCR-indexed since shortly after launch. Its scope is deliberately narrow compared with other PLOS titles: original research and commentary that significantly advance understanding of pathogens — bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and prions — and how they interact with host organisms, spanning topics such as pathogenesis, virulence factors, host immune defenses, emerging pathogens, and vaccine design.

Current figure — hedge before citing

Third-party JCR-tracking services report PLOS Pathogens’ 2024 JCR data-year Impact Factor (2025 release) at approximately 4.7-4.9, and a 2025 data-year figure (JCR 2026 release, issued June 2026) of approximately 4.9, with a five-year Impact Factor commonly reported around 5.4, placing the journal in JCR Quartile 1 for microbiology. These figures are reasonably consistent across trackers compared with some other journal entries CASRAI has checked, but CASRAI could not independently confirm any of them directly against PLOS’s own journal page or jcr.clarivate.com at the time this entry was written. Treat the above as reported, not CASRAI-verified, and check PLOS Pathogens’ own journal page or jcr.clarivate.com directly for the current, authoritative figure before citing one in a formal context such as a CV, grant application, or tenure file.

PLOS Pathogens vs. PLOS Biology vs. PLOS ONE: three different editorial models

All three journals are published by PLOS and each carries its own separate Clarivate JIF, but their editorial models and scope differ in ways that matter for interpreting the number. PLOS ONE is a broad multidisciplinary megajournal that peer-reviews for scientific and methodological soundness only, publishing on the order of thousands of articles a year across nearly every discipline. PLOS Biology is a selective flagship title that reviews for soundness and for perceived significance and broad interest across the biological sciences generally, publishing a small, curated volume. PLOS Pathogens sits alongside PLOS Biology as a selective, significance-reviewed title, but with a narrower subject-matter scope: it is restricted specifically to pathogens and infectious-disease biology rather than biology broadly. That combination of selectivity plus a focused subject area is a large part of why PLOS Pathogens’ reported JIF diverges from both sibling titles, and it means a single-journal citation ratio from one PLOS title should not be assumed to describe another, even though all three share a publisher and the same Clarivate methodology.

Worked example (illustrative, not the journal’s real figures)

Using round, hypothetical numbers rather than PLOS Pathogens’ actual annual citation and publication counts: if a journal published 900 citable items across the two preceding years, and those items received 4,400 citations in the JCR data year, the resulting JIF would be 4,400 / 900 = approximately 4.9. This is the same mechanical calculation Clarivate applies to every JCR-indexed title, including PLOS Pathogens — what varies between journals is the citation and publication volume feeding it, and how narrowly or broadly the subject scope is defined, not the arithmetic.

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. 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. That caution applies to PLOS Pathogens despite its selectivity and focused scope: even a curated, subject-specific journal’s year-level average blends together very different citation trajectories across the articles it publishes, so the journal figure still says little about any one paper.

Counter-example

PLOS Pathogens’ 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. Likewise, assuming PLOS Pathogens’ selectivity and editorial bar work identically to PLOS ONE’s soundness-only review, or that its narrow infectious-disease scope makes it directly comparable to the broad-scope PLOS Biology, are both common category errors — the three journals select differently and cover different subject breadth, and their reported JIFs and acceptance profiles diverge accordingly.

Related terms

• Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s reported figure.
• PLOS ONE’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the megajournal sibling title’s JIF, and a direct scope-and-selectivity contrast for this page.
• PLOS Biology’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the selective, broad-biology flagship sibling title’s JIF, and the closest editorial-model comparison for this page.
• PLOS ONE Author Contributions Statement — PLOS’s shared authorship-disclosure policy, illustrated via its sister title.
• 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 — a related metrics comparison.
• How to look up a journal’s Impact Factor — practical guide to finding a current, authoritative figure.

References

• PLOS Pathogens — journal scope and about page, journals.plos.org/plospathogens.
• Clarivate Journal Citation Reports (JCR) — Impact Factor methodology.
• Third-party JCR trackers (journalmetrics.org, bioxbio.com, resurchify.com, wos-journal.info) — reported current figures, cross-checked but not independently confirmed against jcr.clarivate.com by CASRAI.