Journal Metrics

DORA: The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). Because small numbers of highly cited articles can have outsized influence on certain citation measures like the 2-year Journal Impact Factor (JIF) (see below for definition), Springer Nature believes that these citation measures are not necessarily measures of journal quality, and that authors and readers should consider a range of metrics when evaluating journals to read and publish in.

Article metrics such as number of downloads, citations and online attention are available from each article page, and provide an overview of the attention received by a paper.

Citation Impact 2023

  • Journal Impact Factor: 5.8
  • 5-year Journal Impact Factor: 8.9
  • Immediacy Index: 1.2
  • Eigenfactor® Score: 0.05006
  • Article Influence Score: 2.9

Speed 2023

  • Submission to first editorial decision (median days): 16
  • Submission to acceptance (median days): 159

Usage 2023

  • Downloads: 6,408,593
  • Altmetric mentions: 14,885

Definitions

The metric definitions below are shared by all Springer Nature journals.

Citation Impact

Journal Impact Factor

The Journal Impact Factor is defined as 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 (these comprise articles, reviews, and proceedings papers) published in the journal in the previous two years. Though not a strict mathematical average, the Journal Impact Factor provides a functional approximation of the mean citation rate per citable item. A Journal Impact Factor of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited one time. A Journal Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published one or two years ago have been cited two and a half times. The citing works may be articles published in the same journal. However, most citing works are from different journals, proceedings, or books indexed in Web of Science Core Collection. (Source: Clarivate Analytics)

5-year Journal Impact Factor

The 5-year journal Impact Factor, available from 2007 onward, is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the five previous years. (Source: Clarivate Analytics)

Immediacy Index

The Immediacy Index is the average number of times an article is cited in the year it is published. The journal Immediacy Index indicates how quickly articles in a journal are cited. The aggregate Immediacy Index indicates how quickly articles in a subject category are cited. The Immediacy Index is calculated by dividing the number of citations to articles published in a given year by the number of articles published in that year. Because it is a per-article average, the Immediacy Index tends to discount the advantage of large journals over small ones. However, frequently issued journals may have an advantage because an article published early in the year has a better chance of being cited than one published later in the year. Many publications that publish infrequently or late in the year have low Immediacy Indexes. For comparing journals specializing in cutting-edge research, the immediacy index can provide a useful perspective. (Source: Clarivate Analytics)

Eigenfactor® Score

The Eigenfactor Score calculation is based on the number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year, but it also considers which journals have contributed these citations so that highly cited journals will influence the network more than lesser cited journals. References from one article in a journal to another article from the same journal are removed, so that Eigenfactor Scores are not influenced by journal self-citation. (Source: Clarivate Analytics)

Article Influence Score

The Article Influence Score determines the average influence of a journal's articles over the first five years after publication. It is calculated by multiplying the Eigenfactor Score by 0.01 and dividing by the number of articles in the journal, normalized as a fraction of all articles in all publications. This measure is roughly analogous to the 5-Year Journal Impact Factor in that it is a ratio of a journal’s citation influence to the size of the journal’s article contribution over a period of five years. (Source: Clarivate Analytics)

Speed

Submission to first editorial decision

This measures the median time in days from when the journal receives a manuscript submission to when the submission is either sent out for peer review or rejected.

Submission to acceptance

This measures the median time in days from when the journal receives a manuscript submission to when the submission is accepted. This includes all peer review and can also include time in revision.

Usage

Downloads

Downloads reflect the number of times full text or PDF versions of articles are accessed directly from the journal website and Springer Link. Downloads are defined as HTML, LookInside, PDF, and Epub clicks. Please note that this does not include article downloads from mirror databases such as PubMed Central. These download counts comply with the COUNTER5 standard. COUNTER5 is the fifth iteration of the “Code of Practice,” from Counter Metrics, which is a not-for-profit organization financially sustained by its global community of members, including libraries, consortia, publishers, aggregators, and technology providers.

Altmetric mentions

Total number of mentions (e.g. X, Facebook, Reddit, Blogs, News articles, Policy documents, and Faculty of 1000 reviews) for articles published in the specified timeframe, as provided by Altmetric.