Getting the Most Out of Web of Science

Journal Citation Reports provides publisher-neutral statistics and data about journals so that you can make decisions about the impact and role that a journal has within a discipline.

To access Journal Citation Reports, click on the Products link at the top right of the Web of Science home page and select Journal Citation Reports from the drop-down menu.

Once you have reached the Journal Citation Reports home page, you can search by journal name, ISSN, eISSN, category, or keyword. You can also browse journals by name and selected criteria including total citations, 5 Year Journal Impact Factor (JIF), and JIF Without Self Cites, as well as browse categories.  However, these features are available through the Filter function after conducting the initial search.

If you start with Browse Journals, you will be taken to a list containing the full set of journals in Web of Science. You can then limit the list using the Filter option. The Filter option allows you to limit by journal titles, categories, publishers, country/region, Journal impact Factor (JIF) and more.

If you choose to explore journals by Categories, you will be a provided a comprehensive list of journals that fit into that category on the results page. This list ranks the journals from those with the highest Journal Impact Factor (JIF) to the lowest, and also shows the total number of citations that journal has. This allows you to quickly access the influences of various journals in research and within subject areas. Click on the journal's name in the results list to see more details about it, including a list of the articles in the journal that have received the most citations, as well as a graph of its Journal Impact Factor Trend for the year.

The images below show journals using the Categories filter, Astronomy & Astrophysics as the category, and the data for the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Review.

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a metric that was developed to assist librarians in assessing journals when selecting or deselecting journals while curating their library collections. Now, the JIF is a tool that is also used by publishers and researchers. This allows for professionals to determine which journals are making an impact in their field, especially due to the significance that articles in those journals are having within a discipline.

According to Clarivate, the "JIF provides a ratio of citations to a journal in a given year to the citable items in the prior two years-in other words, it reflects the frequency that the average article in a given journal has been cited."

Be aware that the JIF is a journal-level metric and is not intended for the evaluation of individual articles or researchers. For more assistance on citation analysis, especially questions related to promotion and tenure applications, please contact your subject librarian.