Clarivate removes citations to and from retracted articles from JIF
Clarivate has announced that, from 2025 (2024 data), citations to and from retracted articles will no longer contribute towards the Journal Impact Factor.
Starting from this year’s JCR release in June, the company will exclude citations to and from retracted content when calculating the JIF numerator, ensuring that citations from retracted articles do not contribute to the numerical value of the JIF. However, retracted articles will still be included in the article count (JIF denominator), maintaining transparency and accountability.
In a blog post Nandita Quaderi, Senior Vice President & Editor-in-Chief, Web of Science, writes: “In recent years there has been an increase in the number of retractions and we have also noted signs of a reduction in the time it takes to retract indexed articles. Given these trends, we have decided to introduce a new policy to pre-emptively guard against any such time that citations to and from retracted content could contribute to widespread distortions in the JIF.
“All those involved in creating, reviewing, publishing and assessing academic literature share the responsibility for protecting the integrity of the scholarly record, and we take our part in that collective responsibility very seriously. This change is just the latest step in our ongoing efforts to support research integrity across editorial selection, our products and our metrics.
“As we move forward, we will continue to monitor changes in journal behaviour, consider community feedback, and examine how we might improve other indicators, descriptive data and visualisations contained within the JCR.”
Clarivate points out that citations to and from retracted articles represent a “tiny contribution” to JIF calculations. Overall, of the 4.6+ million citations that contributed to the JIF across ~ 22,000 journals in the 2024 JCR release, only ~20,000 were to or from content that had been retracted at that time (~0.4%).
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