We are very excited to announce that Hospital Pediatrics will now be included in the Web of Science Core Collection, Emerging Sources Citation Index. In addition to recognizing the quality of the work the journal has done and is doing, this means that we will receive a Journal Impact Factor (JIF)! We suspect our first impact factor will be given in spring of 2025.
The JIF is one of the most commonly cited metrics of, well, the impact that a journal has on the field. As calculated by Clarivate, the JIF looks at the number of citations received in a given year, divided by the number of citable items (typically research and review articles) in the journal during the two preceding years.
There are other metrics of journal impact available, but the JIF is the one that authors most often turn to when they are deciding to which journal they will submit their manuscripts, and it is an important gauge of readership and the potential for their research findings to be most widely disseminated. CiteScore, compiled by Elsevier, is conceptually similar (our CiteScore is 3.7). However, as with anything, these have to be taken in context. Our journal is focused on pediatric hospital care, which means the impact will, by definition, be more limited than that of a journal with a more expansive focus, such as our sister publication Pediatrics (JIF 7.14 and CiteScore of 9.6).
We are hugely thankful to the AAP Journals Team and the Editorial Board, who helped ensure that our application was completely error-free. And, of course, to all the authors who have entrusted their work to us over the years: Your contributions to the literature and our field make our work possible.
