Clarivate has removed its Web of Science hold on Heliyon, the Cell Press/Elsevier mega-journal, restoring the journal’s eligibility for indexing and a Journal Impact Factor (JIF) after nearly two years in limbo. Retraction Watch reported the development on August 7, 2026, under the headline ‘Clarivate removes hold on mega-journal Heliyon after internal audit, 650+ retractions.’ For research administration offices, librarians, and authors who published in Heliyon during the hold, the case is a concrete illustration of what a Web of Science hold actually does — and does not do — to a journal’s standing.
What happened
Clarivate placed Heliyon on a Web of Science indexing hold in September 2024, the same month it placed a hold on the medical mega-journal Cureus. A hold pauses indexing of a journal’s new content in the Web of Science Core Collection while Clarivate investigates concerns about the journal’s editorial or quality-control practices; it is a distinct, earlier-stage action from delisting, though per Retraction Watch’s reporting on Clarivate’s own historical disclosures, a large majority of journals placed on hold are ultimately delisted rather than cleared.
Heliyon instead underwent what Retraction Watch describes as an internal audit by its publisher, resulting in more than 1,000 corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions to its published record, over 650 of which were retractions. Elsevier used the correction process to address the underlying quality and integrity issues Clarivate had flagged, and Clarivate lifted the hold following that review, according to Retraction Watch’s August 2026 report. No JIF was issued for Heliyon in the June 2026 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) release, since the journal lacked a full, complete indexing record for the relevant citation window during the hold; a JIF is expected to reappear in the October 2026 JCR release now that indexing has resumed.
What a Web of Science ‘hold’ actually means
A hold is not a delisting. It means Clarivate has paused adding a journal’s new content to the Web of Science Core Collection (including the Science Citation Index Expanded, the index most JIF calculations draw on) while it reviews the journal against its editorial and quality criteria. Practically, that has several downstream effects worth distinguishing:
- New articles stop being indexed in Web of Science for the duration of the hold, though they typically remain indexed elsewhere (Scopus, PubMed, the publisher’s own platform) and remain part of the scholarly record.
- No new JIF is calculated for a journal without a complete indexing record for the relevant JCR data year — this is why Heliyon had no JIF in the June 2026 release despite having carried one in prior cycles.
- The outcome is not predetermined. A hold can end in delisting (as with Cureus, delisted from Web of Science in October 2025 after its own September 2024 hold) or in reinstatement (as with Heliyon), depending on what the review and any publisher corrective action find.
The mechanism that triggers a hold also varies. Heliyon and Cureus were both broad-scope, high-volume open-access mega-journals whose soundness-based peer-review model (assessing technical and ethical validity rather than perceived novelty) made them attractive targets for paper mills submitting large volumes of fabricated or templated manuscripts. That is a different pathway onto a hold than, for example, Clarivate’s March 2026 hold on six International Journal of Surgery Publishing Group titles, which followed a Retraction Watch investigation into a mandatory citation policy that mechanically inflated citation counts rather than a paper-mill volume problem. Both land on the same Web of Science mechanism — a hold pending review — from different underlying causes, which is worth keeping straight when advising researchers on what a given hold actually signals about a specific journal.
Practical guidance if you published in Heliyon during the hold
For authors, research administrators, and librarians handling questions about articles published in Heliyon between September 2024 and August 2026, a few points are worth communicating clearly:
- Publication status is unaffected unless your specific article was corrected or retracted. The hold affected indexing and metrics, not the validity of every article published during that window. Check the article’s own record on ScienceDirect or via its DOI/Crossref record for any correction or retraction notice; the vast majority of articles published during the hold were not part of the corrected set.
- Don’t treat a missing current JIF as evidence of low quality on its own. During the hold, Heliyon displayed no active Web of Science-based metric — that reflected the indexing pause, not a retroactive judgment on individual articles. Tenure, promotion, and grant-review committees relying on JIF as a proxy should be advised to check a journal’s current Web of Science status and JCR quartile directly (Clarivate’s Master Journal List, mjl.clarivate.com) rather than inferring quality from a metrics gap.
- Expect a new JIF in the October 2026 JCR release, not before. Any guidance citing a Heliyon JIF should specify which JCR data year and release it comes from, and flag the gap during the hold period explicitly.
- Use this as a live example of hold vs. delisting when writing journal-quality guidance. Librarians and RA offices maintaining where-to-publish or predatory-journal-adjacent guidance should distinguish a journal currently on hold (status pending, outcome uncertain) from one that has been delisted (a completed, negative outcome) — conflating the two overstates the certainty of an in-progress review.
- Lean on assessment frameworks that don’t depend on JIF at all where possible. The episode is a reminder of why DORA and CoARA-aligned research-assessment practices, which de-emphasize journal-level metrics in favor of article-level and qualitative evaluation, are more resilient to exactly this kind of temporary metrics gap.
Frequently asked questions
Is Heliyon still indexed in Web of Science?
Yes. Clarivate lifted the hold as of its August 2026 review, restoring ongoing indexing of new Heliyon content in the Web of Science Core Collection.
Will articles published in Heliyon during the hold count toward a future Journal Impact Factor?
Articles published during the hold that remained indexed should be eligible to contribute citations to future JIF calculations now that indexing has resumed; the journal itself had no JIF calculated in the June 2026 JCR release because it lacked a complete indexing record for that citation window. A new JIF is expected in the October 2026 release.
Does a Web of Science hold mean a journal is predatory?
No. A hold is a review-pending status applied to journals already accepted into Web of Science, triggered by quality, integrity, or editorial-practice concerns Clarivate wants investigated — it is not the same designation as a journal that was never accepted, and it can end in either delisting or reinstatement depending on what the review finds and whether the publisher takes corrective action.
How is this different from the Cureus case?
Cureus was placed on hold in the same month (September 2024) but was delisted from Web of Science in October 2025, rather than reinstated. The two mega-journals’ holds began under similar circumstances but ended in opposite outcomes, underscoring that a hold’s outcome should not be assumed either way while it is in progress.
This account is based on Retraction Watch’s August 7, 2026 reporting. Some specifics of Clarivate’s internal review process are as characterized in that reporting and have not been independently confirmed against a Clarivate primary-source statement, which was not publicly available at the time of writing.
