A Q1 journal is one ranked in the top 25% of its subject category by a citation-based metric such as Journal Impact Factor, Scopus CiteScore, or SCImago Journal Rank (SJR). Quartiles run Q1 (top 25%) through Q4 (bottom 25%) and are assigned per subject category, so the same journal can carry a different quartile in each ranking system.
For a full walkthrough of finding a specific journal’s current JIF (including named examples like PLOS ONE, eLife, Heliyon, and Cureus), see CASRAI’s companion guide, How to Look Up a Journal’s Impact Factor. This page assumes that background and goes further into how quartile tiers are built and used.
What the Journal Impact Factor measures, briefly
The Journal Impact Factor is calculated annually by Clarivate and published in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The formula: citations recorded in year Y to a journal’s citable items (articles and reviews) published in years Y-1 and Y-2, divided by the number of those citable items. It is a journal-level average, not a per-article or per-author figure, and it traces back to Eugene Garfield’s work at the Institute for Scientific Information in the 1950s, originally built as a library-collection-development tool rather than a research-quality measure.
Through the 2022 JCR release, only journals indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) or Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) received a JIF. Starting with the 2023 JCR release, Clarivate extended JIF eligibility to all Web of Science Core Collection journals meeting its quality criteria, including the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) — so ESCI-indexed journals now do receive a JIF too, a change worth knowing if you’re used to the older rule. You can check a journal’s current indexing status for free via the Web of Science Master Journal List; the full JCR figures themselves require an institutional or library subscription.
A related but distinct figure, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), is derived from Elsevier’s Scopus database using a PageRank-style weighting over three years of citations — not Clarivate’s two-year JIF formula. Many free “impact factor lookup” sites are actually showing SJR, CiteScore, or another mirrored figure rather than the trademarked Clarivate JIF, which is worth checking before citing a number as “the” impact factor.
The well-documented limits of impact factor as a research-assessment tool
The core problem is a mismatch between what JIF measures (a journal-wide citation average) and how it gets used (as a stand-in for the quality of one article, or one researcher’s body of work). Citation counts within a journal are highly skewed — a small number of heavily cited papers pull the average up, so most individual articles in a high-JIF journal are cited far less than the JIF figure implies.
This is precisely the practice targeted by the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), drafted by journal editors and publishers at the American Society for Cell Biology’s December 2012 meeting and published in May 2013. DORA’s core recommendation is not to use journal-based metrics — including JIF — “as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.” DORA passed 25,000 signatories in May 2024 and continues to gain them.
The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), launched December 2022 around its Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, takes a related but distinct position: qualitative peer judgement should lead assessment, supported by — not replaced by — responsible use of quantitative indicators. CoARA explicitly names JIF as a metric that has been used prematurely or inappropriately as a substitute for that judgement.
What quartile rankings (Q1–Q4) actually are
A quartile ranking sorts journals within a subject category into four equal-sized tiers, ordered by a journal-level metric, from highest to lowest:
- Q1 — top 25% of journals in the category
- Q2 — next 25% (26th–50th percentile)
- Q3 — next 25% (51st–75th percentile)
- Q4 — bottom 25% (76th–100th percentile)
Three different organizations publish quartile rankings, using three different underlying metrics and three different subject-category schemes. They are not interchangeable, and a single journal can carry a different quartile in each system:
Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate) quartiles
Clarivate ranks each journal by JIF within every Web of Science subject category it is assigned to, then converts that rank into a value the JCR documentation calls Z: a journal’s rank position in the category divided by the total number of journals in that category. Z between 0.0 and 0.25 is Q1, 0.25–0.5 is Q2, 0.5–0.75 is Q3, and above 0.75 is Q4. Because assignment happens per category, a journal listed in two Web of Science categories receives two separate ranks and can land in two different quartiles — for example, Q1 in a narrow specialty category and Q2 or Q3 in a broader adjacent one. Quartiles are recalculated with every annual JCR release (each June).
Scopus CiteScore quartiles
Elsevier’s CiteScore uses a four-year citation window (citations in the current year to documents published in the prior four years, divided by the number of those documents, counting articles, reviews, conference papers, and data papers as citable). Journals are ranked by CiteScore within each Scopus subject category (using Elsevier’s own All Science Journal Classification, ASJC) and divided into quartiles the same top-25%/bottom-25% way. Scopus increasingly surfaces the underlying percentile figure alongside or instead of the quartile letter, but the quartile bucketing is still shown on journal profile pages.
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) quartiles
SCImago publishes its own quartile rankings, also Scopus-sourced but built on the SJR indicator (a prestige-weighted citation measure, not a raw citation count) rather than CiteScore. SJR quartiles are likewise assigned per Scopus subject category — SCImago’s category scheme runs to more than 300 specific categories under 27 broad subject areas — so, again, a journal can be Q1 in one category and Q3 in a neighboring one.
Because these three systems use different citation windows, different underlying metrics, and different category taxonomies, “what’s this journal’s quartile?” is not a fully specified question until you also specify which system and which subject category. A journal quartile figure quoted without either of those is missing information a reader would need to interpret it correctly.
How researchers and institutions actually use quartile rankings
Quartile tiers get used in a few recurring, concrete ways:
- Journal selection — authors and research offices use quartile standing (alongside scope fit, turnaround time, and open-access terms) as one input when shortlisting where to submit.
- Institutional and national evaluation criteria — some universities and national research-assessment frameworks set explicit publication-count expectations by quartile (for example, a minimum number of Q1 or Q2 publications) as part of tenure, promotion, or performance-review criteria. This practice is widespread enough that it is a frequent, direct target of the DORA/CoARA critique described above, precisely because a quartile is still a journal-level metric being applied to individual researchers.
- Funder and library reporting — some funders and institutional research offices track quartile distribution across a portfolio of grant-funded outputs as a rough, aggregate signal, distinct from evaluating any single output.
- Library collection development — quartile standing, like JIF itself, is still used as one factor (among cost, usage statistics, and faculty request) in subscription and “big deal” negotiation decisions — arguably closer to the JIF’s original library-tool purpose than its use in individual assessment.
The same limitation that applies to raw JIF applies to quartile rank, and for the same underlying reason: a quartile is a bucketed version of a journal-level metric, not a measure of any individual article or author. Sorting journals into four bins doesn’t change what’s being measured — it just coarsens it. DORA’s recommendation against using journal-based metrics as a surrogate for individual quality applies as directly to “is this a Q1 journal” as it does to “what is this journal’s raw impact factor.” A Q1 classification says a journal is in the top quarter of its category by one particular metric in one particular year — it says nothing definitive about the quality of a specific paper published in it, or of the researcher who wrote that paper.
Frequently asked questions
Can a journal be Q1 in one field and Q3 or Q4 in another?
Yes, routinely. Quartiles are assigned per subject category, not to a journal overall. A multidisciplinary or broad-scope journal indexed in several Web of Science or Scopus categories can rank in the top quarter of one category and the bottom half of another in the same year, under the same underlying metric.
Is a Scopus quartile the same as a JCR (Web of Science) quartile for the same journal?
Not necessarily. They’re built from different metrics (CiteScore vs. JIF), different citation windows, different citable-document definitions, and different subject-category schemes (Scopus/ASJC vs. Web of Science categories). A journal can plausibly land in different quartiles in the two systems for the same publication year.
Where do I actually find a journal’s quartile ranking?
For JCR quartiles, an institutional Journal Citation Reports subscription (accessed via most research-university libraries) shows the quartile alongside the JIF for each category a journal is assigned to. For Scopus CiteScore and SJR quartiles, Elsevier’s Scopus Sources list and the free SCImago Journal & Country Rank site (scimagojr.com) both publish current quartile data without a subscription.
Does DORA say never to look at a journal’s quartile or impact factor at all?
No. DORA does not ask institutions to ignore journal-level metrics entirely — its recommendation is specifically against using them as a surrogate for individual article or researcher quality, and against embedding them directly in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions. Using quartile standing as one input into a journal-selection decision, or citing it transparently and in context, is a different use than the one DORA and CoARA object to.
Does a higher quartile mean a “better” journal?
It means the journal ranks higher on that specific metric, within that specific subject category, in that specific year — not that it is a better fit for a given paper, has stronger peer review, or produces more reliable science. Scope match, editorial rigor, audience, and open-access terms are all independent of quartile standing and, for most publication decisions, matter more.
See also CASRAI’s Journal Impact Factor dictionary entry, the h-index entry for an author-level (rather than journal-level) alternative, and the Scholarly Publishing hub for the rest of CASRAI’s publishing-cluster content.
