Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher who needs Science Advances' current Impact Factor for a grant biosketch checking science.org's own Journal Metrics section directly, or their institutional library's JCR access, rather than trusting a number found via a general search engine result.
- Is an instance
A librarian using 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 JCR-indexed journal -- Science Advances included -- arrives at its published JIF, independent of what the exact current number is.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Citing a specific Science Advances Impact Factor figure found via a general web search or AI-generated summary as though it were confirmed -- CASRAI could not verify any specific figure directly against science.org or Clarivate's JCR, and third-party trackers can lag or diverge from the publisher's and Clarivate's own current release.
- Not an instance
Citing Science Advances' 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
Assuming Science Advances shares a JIF with its sister AAAS publication Science, or that a single highly cited Science Advances article 'has' the journal's JIF -- both are conflations DORA's guidance cautions against.
Editorial commentary
Science Advances’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a specific instance of the general Journal Impact Factor metric published annually by Clarivate in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Like every JCR-indexed title, Science Advances receives its own separate JIF — distinct from its parent journal Science or any other AAAS title — 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. Science Advances is a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary, fully open-access journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) — the same publisher behind Science — and has been indexed in Clarivate’s Science Citation Index Expanded since its 2015 launch, which is what makes it JCR-eligible.
Current figure — CASRAI could not verify a number directly and is not repeating an unverified one
CASRAI attempted to verify Science Advances’ current Impact Factor directly against science.org’s Science Advances journal page, including a retry with an alternate request configuration, and against jcr.clarivate.com. Science.org’s public journal page did not expose a static Impact Factor figure in the content CASRAI could retrieve (the figure, if displayed, appears to require a specific metrics view or account context this page could not reach), and Clarivate’s JCR database itself sits behind institutional-subscription authentication that CASRAI does not have. Rather than repeat a figure sourced from a third-party JCR-tracking aggregator or Wikipedia’s infobox — which is exactly the sourcing pattern that put earlier versions of this page and 43 other CASRAI journal-JIF pages out of date with each other — this page does not assert a specific current number. To get the current, authoritative figure, check science.org’s Science Advances page directly (look for its “Journal Metrics” or “About” section) or, with institutional library access, look up Science Advances directly in jcr.clarivate.com. The current Clarivate cycle is the 2025 data year, released June 2026; any figure you find should be from that cycle, not an older one, and should be attributed to science.org or jcr.clarivate.com specifically rather than to a secondary tracker.
Worked example (illustrative, not the journal’s real figures)
Using round, hypothetical numbers rather than Science Advances’ actual annual citation and publication counts: if a journal published 3,000 citable items across the two preceding years, and those items received 37,500 citations in the JCR data year, the resulting JIF would be 37,500 / 3,000 = 12.5. This is the same mechanical calculation Clarivate applies to every JCR-indexed title — what varies between journals is the citation and publication volume feeding it, 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. As a large multidisciplinary journal, Science Advances’ JIF is shaped by a small number of highly cited papers and by field-level citation norms that differ across the many disciplines it publishes in, 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 an open-access, high-visibility journal like Science Advances gets its JIF cited in tenure, promotion, or grant-review contexts as if it described any one article, rather than the journal’s two-year citation average as a whole.
Counter-example
Science Advances’ 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, an individual highly cited Science Advances article does not “have” the journal’s JIF — the metric is computed at the journal level, not the article level, which is exactly the conflation DORA’s guidance warns against. Confusing Science Advances’ JIF with that of its sister publication Science is also incorrect: each AAAS title receives its own independently calculated figure.
Keeping this current
Last checked by CASRAI: 16 August 2026. CASRAI could not directly confirm a current Science Advances Impact Factor figure from science.org or jcr.clarivate.com at that time (see above) and has deliberately removed the previously published third-party-tracker figures from this page rather than continue presenting them as current. If you can access science.org’s own metrics section or jcr.clarivate.com through an institutional subscription, that is the correct place to get today’s number. JCR figures generally refresh each June with Clarivate’s new release.
Related terms
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates.
- Nature Communications’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another journal-specific illustration of the same metric.
- Scientific Reports’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another journal-specific illustration of the same metric.
- 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 Science Advances’ current impact factor?
CASRAI could not directly verify a current figure from science.org’s Science Advances page or from jcr.clarivate.com (institutional access required) as of 16 August 2026, and has deliberately stopped repeating third-party-tracker or Wikipedia-sourced numbers on this page. Check science.org’s Journal Metrics/About section for Science Advances, or jcr.clarivate.com with library access, for the authoritative current figure — the current Clarivate cycle is the 2025 data year, released June 2026.
Why doesn’t this page state a specific number for Science Advances’ impact factor?
Because CASRAI could not verify one directly against science.org or Clarivate’s JCR, and an earlier version of this page repeated figures sourced from third-party JCR-tracking aggregators as though they were confirmed — exactly the sourcing pattern an internal audit found across the majority of CASRAI’s journal-Impact-Factor pages. Rather than repeat an unverified number, this page now points readers to the primary sources.
Is Science Advances’ 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 document set, while the Journal Impact Factor is Clarivate’s two-year metric published in the JCR. Reporting one as if it were the other is a common sourcing error.
Does Science Advances have the same impact factor as Science?
No. Science Advances and Science are both AAAS titles, but each is indexed and scored separately in the JCR, so each receives its own independently calculated Impact Factor. An individual highly cited Science Advances article also does not “have” the journal’s JIF, since the metric is computed at the journal level, not the article level.
How is a journal’s Impact Factor, like Science Advances’, actually calculated?
It is 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. For example, a journal that published 3,000 citable items over two years and received 37,500 citations to them in the data year would have a JIF of 37,500 / 3,000 = 12.5 — the same mechanical calculation Clarivate applies to every JCR-indexed title; only the citation and publication counts feeding it differ between journals.
Should Science Advances’ Impact Factor be used to judge a specific article or researcher?
No. DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment), the CoARA coalition, and Clarivate itself all caution against using a single journal-level metric like the JIF as a proxy for the quality of an individual article or researcher. Science Advances is a large multidisciplinary journal whose JIF is shaped by a small number of highly cited papers and by field-level citation norms that vary across its disciplines, so the same score means different things depending on what is being compared.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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