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Nature Human Behaviour’s Journal Impact Factor is 18.8 (2025), and its 5-year Journal Impact Factor is 21.2 (2025), according to the journal’s own metrics page at nature.com (read 2026-11-07). The journal’s official spelling is “Behaviour”; searches for “Nature Human Behavior” (US spelling) point to the same journal. This page gives the full metric panel with each measure defined, shows the impact factor arithmetic with a hypothetical worked example, and explains how to read a number like 18.8 responsibly.
Nature Human Behaviour impact factor and related metrics
The table lists every citation metric the publisher shows for the journal, all labelled 2025 on the journal’s page (nature.com/nathumbehav/journal-impact, read 2026-11-07).
| Metric | Value (2025) | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Journal Impact Factor (2-year) | 18.8 | Citations in the JCR year to items from the previous two years, divided by scholarly items published in those two years |
| 5-year Journal Impact Factor | 21.2 | Citations in the JCR year to items from the previous five years, divided by articles published in those five years |
| Immediacy Index | 4.0 | Citation measure listed by the publisher alongside the impact factor |
| Eigenfactor Score | 0.04882 | Journal-level influence measure listed by the publisher |
| Article Influence Score | 8.701 | Eigenfactor-based measure listed by the publisher |
| SNIP | 5.260 | Source Normalized Impact per Paper |
| SJR | 4.896 | SCImago Journal Rank |
The same page reports a median of 6 days from submission to first editorial decision and a median of 252 days from submission to acceptance. For 2025 it lists 5,522,027 downloads and 28,481 Altmetric mentions. According to the journal metrics page, the publisher, Springer Nature, is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
Definition: what is a Journal Impact Factor?
A Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a ratio published by Clarivate in Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Springer Nature’s definition, shared across its journals, is: all citations to the journal in the current JCR year to items published in the previous two years, divided by the total number of scholarly items (articles, reviews and proceedings papers) published in the journal in those two years. It is “not a strict mathematical average” but a functional approximation of the mean citation rate per citable item.
Formula, with every symbol explained
For JCR year Y:
JIF = C / N
- C: citations received during year Y by items the journal published in years Y-1 and Y-2.
- N: number of citable items (articles, reviews, proceedings papers) the journal published in Y-1 and Y-2.
The 5-year version uses the same logic with a five-year window: citations in the JCR year to items from the five previous years, divided by articles published in those five years.
Worked example with hypothetical numbers
This example uses invented round numbers for an imaginary journal, not data for Nature Human Behaviour, so the arithmetic is easy to follow. Suppose that in 2025 the journal received 540 citations to items it published in 2023 and 2024, and that it published 72 citable items across 2023 and 2024.
- C = 540
- N = 72
- JIF = 540 / 72 = 7.5
A JIF of 7.5 means items published one or two years earlier were cited 7.5 times on average in the JCR year, in the sense Springer Nature describes (a functional approximation, not a strict mean).
How to read an impact factor
Clarivate’s guidance says the impact factor must be used with care and compared within subject categories; review articles tend to be cited more, and self-citations make up roughly 13% of citations received. Springer Nature adds that a few highly cited articles can have an outsized influence on the 2-year JIF, so it recommends considering a range of metrics.
| Question | Reading guidance (source) |
|---|---|
| Is 18.8 high or low? | Judge it against journals in the same JCR subject category, not against every journal (Clarivate) |
| Why is there a 2-year and a 5-year figure? | The windows differ (18.8 versus 21.2); Clarivate notes the 5-year value may be more useful for some users |
| Does it describe my paper? | No. It describes the journal; article downloads, citations and online attention are on each article page (Springer Nature) |
| Is it a quality measure? | Springer Nature states these measures are “not necessarily measures of journal quality” |
What’s a good impact factor in psychology?
There is no single threshold. Clarivate’s guidance is to compare a journal with others in its own subject category, so a “good” value is one that is high relative to that category’s other journals in the same JCR year. Check the journal’s rank or quartile in JCR, as described in our guide to impact factor and quartile rankings.
Is 7.2 a good impact factor?
It depends on the subject category. A value of 7.2 means articles from the previous two years were cited about 7.2 times on average (a functional approximation). Whether that is strong can only be answered by comparing with other journals in the same category and year, not with Nature Human Behaviour’s 18.8 or with a journal from another field.
Which journal has the highest acceptance rate?
Impact factor does not report acceptance rate, and this page does not rank journals by it. Nature Human Behaviour’s metrics page publishes speed figures (median 6 days to first decision, 252 days to acceptance) rather than an acceptance rate. For choosing a venue, see how to choose a journal.
Assumptions and common mistakes
- Mixing years. A 2025 figure and a 2024 figure come from different JCR releases; always state the year.
- Mixing metrics. JIF, SJR and SNIP are built differently and are not interchangeable; see impact factor vs SJR and CiteScore vs impact factor.
- Comparing across fields. Compare within a subject category.
- Treating it as a per-article average. It is an approximation, and a few highly cited items can dominate.
- Using it to judge people. DORA, which the publisher Springer Nature has signed according to the journal metrics page, argues against journal-level metrics as a proxy for individual papers; see DORA and CoARA commitments.
How to report it
Name the metric, year, value and source, for example: “Nature Human Behaviour (2025 Journal Impact Factor 18.8; 5-year Journal Impact Factor 21.2; source: journal metrics page at nature.com, accessed 2026-11-07)”. Cite the metrics page as a website source in whichever style your target venue requires.
In APA 7 style, the metrics page can be given as a webpage reference with the journal as group author:
Nature Human Behaviour. (n.d.). Journal metrics. Nature Portfolio. Retrieved November 7, 2026, from https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/journal-impact
The in-text citation is (Nature Human Behaviour, n.d.). Because the page is updated over time, keep the retrieval date.
How to view impact factors
The authoritative source is Journal Citation Reports from Clarivate, usually through an institutional subscription. Publishers also display the figure on journal pages, as Nature Human Behaviour does at the URL above. Step-by-step instructions are in how to look up a journal’s impact factor.
Calculate it in Excel, R or Python
These snippets reproduce the hypothetical example above (540 citations, 72 items).
Excel: with citations in A1 and items in B1, enter =ROUND(A1/B1, 1) in C1, which returns 7.5.
R:
citations <- 540
items <- 72
round(citations / items, 1) # 7.5Python:
citations, items = 540, 72
print(round(citations / items, 1)) # 7.5Frequently asked questions
What is the impact factor of Nature Human Behavior?
18.8 (2025), with a 5-year impact factor of 21.2 (2025), per the journal’s page at nature.com read on 2026-11-07. “Behavior” and “Behaviour” refer to the same journal; the official spelling is “Behaviour”.
What is the SJR of Nature Human Behaviour?
4.896 (2025), alongside SNIP 5.260 (2025), as shown on the journal’s metrics page.
Where can I read about sibling Nature-family journals?
See the profiles of Nature Reviews Psychology and Nature Biotechnology.
Sources
- Nature Human Behaviour, Journal metrics: https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/journal-impact (read 2026-11-07).
- Clarivate, The Clarivate Impact Factor: https://clarivate.com/academia-government/essays/impact-factor/ (read 2026-11-07).
