Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher checking Science Translational Medicine's current reported 2-year JIF before deciding where to submit a clinical/translational manuscript, understanding the figure sits alongside CiteScore and JCR quartile rather than replacing them.
- 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 Translational Medicine included -- arrives at its published JIF.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Confusing Science Translational Medicine with the unrelated, similarly named Journal of Translational Medicine (BioMed Central/Springer Nature) -- these are different journals from different publishers with different JIFs.
- Not an instance
Assuming Science Translational Medicine shares a JIF with its sister AAAS publications Science or Science Advances, or that a single highly cited article "has" the journal's JIF -- both conflations are exactly what DORA's guidance warns against.
Editorial commentary
Science Translational Medicine’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). Science Translational Medicine is a distinct journal from Science and from its AAAS sibling Science Advances — it is not a section or edition of either, but its own separately indexed, separately titled publication, and like every JCR-indexed title it receives its own separate JIF each 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 Translational Medicine is a peer-reviewed, weekly journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) — the same publisher as Science and Science Advances — launched in October 2009 (ISSN 1946-6234 print, 1946-6242 online). Its scope is bench-to-bedside: basic, biomedical, translational, and clinical research about human disease, along with the tools, technologies, and regulatory science that move findings toward clinical application.
Current figure — hedge before citing
Third-party JCR-tracking services and journal-affiliated summaries report Science Translational Medicine’s 2024 JCR data-year Impact Factor (2025 release) at approximately 14.6, while at least one independent aggregator lists a nearby but distinct figure closer to 13.6 for the same data year — a common source of minor cross-tracker discrepancy. CASRAI could not independently confirm either figure directly against jcr.clarivate.com at the time this entry was written. Treat the number as reported, not CASRAI-verified, and check science.org’s Science Translational Medicine 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.
Worked example (illustrative, not the journal’s actual figures)
Using round, hypothetical numbers rather than Science Translational Medicine’s actual annual citation and publication counts (which are not independently confirmed above): if a journal published 1,200 citable items across the two preceding years, and those items received 17,520 citations in the JCR data year, the resulting JIF would be 17,520 / 1,200 = 14.6. This is the same mechanical calculation Clarivate applies to every JCR-indexed title, including Science Translational Medicine — 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. Science Translational Medicine’s relatively narrow, translational-medicine focus means its JIF is shaped by citation norms specific to clinical and translational research, which differ from the broad multidisciplinary norms shaping its sister title Science Advances — so the same-looking score reflects a different citing population depending on the journal. 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.
Counter-example
Science Translational Medicine is not the same journal as the unrelated, similarly named Journal of Translational Medicine (published by BioMed Central/Springer Nature) — the names are close enough that citing one journal’s JIF while meaning the other is a real sourcing error. It is also not the same journal as Science or Science Advances; each AAAS title receives its own independently calculated JIF, and the three should never be treated as interchangeable or averaged together. Finally, an individual highly cited Science Translational Medicine article does not “have” the journal’s JIF — the metric is computed at the journal level, not the article level.
Related terms
- Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s reported figure.
- Science Advances’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — another AAAS title’s JIF, distinct from this one.
- Nature Communications’ 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.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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