Favourable Effect of Changes on 2020 Journal Citation Reports Calculation: A Pilot Analysis in Immunology Category to Generate “Baits for a Good Catch” in Near Future

Abstract

The Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2020 release contains the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) for each journal indexed in the Web of Science data bank. A change influenced this recent release in its calculation because of the inclusion of early access items not considered in previous releases. These alterations can directly influence JIF results, mainly due to a more extensive source of citations, but this may not have occurred homogeneously for all journals. We performed a simplified evaluation of JIF progression in one area Web of Science journals category, Immunology, to evaluate the effect of these alterations in JIFs and discuss possible reasons for the observed effect yielding some evidence for the next JCR release.