Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher checking Cancer Research's last-confirmed Impact Factor (22.6, 2024 JCR data year) before deciding where to submit an oncology manuscript, while separately checking aacrjournals.org/cancerres for whether the 2025-data-year figure has since been published.
- Is an instance
A department administrator working through the worked-example calculation (total citations to the journal's prior-two-years' citable items, divided by that item count) to explain to faculty how Cancer Research, like any JCR-indexed title, arrives at its published JIF.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Confusing Cancer Research (the AACR-published peer-reviewed journal) with Cancer Research UK, the UK medical research charity -- the charity does not publish a journal and has no Journal Impact Factor.
- Not an instance
Describing a single highly cited Cancer Research article as "having" the journal's JIF -- the metric is computed at the journal level only, not attributable to one article or author, which is exactly the conflation DORA's guidance cautions against.
Editorial commentary
Cancer Research’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is the Journal Impact Factor of the flagship general-oncology journal published by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), distinct from other AACR titles (Cancer Discovery, Clinical Cancer Research) and unrelated to Cancer Research UK, the funding charity of a similar name.
This JIF is one specific instance of the general Journal Impact Factor metric Clarivate publishes annually in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR); Cancer Research has been published continuously since 1916 and receives its own separate JIF each JCR release.
What the number actually measures
The JIF is a ratio: citations received in a given year to citable items (articles and reviews) the journal published in the two preceding years, divided by the number of those citable items. Cancer Research is indexed in Clarivate’s Science Citation Index Expanded and receives a JIF on that basis, alongside a separately reported 5-year Impact Factor and a JCR quartile ranking within its assigned oncology/cancer-research categories.
The most recently confirmed figure for Cancer Research’s 2-year Impact Factor is 22.6 for the 2024 JCR data year (2025 release). Clarivate’s current release cycle, as of this update, covers the 2025 JCR data year (released June 2026) — CASRAI attempted to verify a 2025-data-year figure directly against the publisher’s own journal page (aacrjournals.org/cancerres) on 16 August 2026 and the page could not be reached (access blocked). Two named trackers have since supplied that figure: bioxbio and Wikipedia both attribute 22.6 to the 2025 JCR data year (Wikipedia citing the 2025 Journal Citation Reports, Clarivate 2026), and give 16.6 for the 2024 data year — see the table below, where every row names its source. Note that an earlier version of this page dated 22.6 to the 2024 data year; that attribution was wrong. The publisher’s own page remains unreachable, so verify against aacrjournals.org/cancerres or jcr.clarivate.com before citing a figure in a formal context such as a grant application or tenure file.
Cancer Research’s Impact Factor in 2026: what the named sources actually say
CASRAI now publishes a year-by-year figure for Cancer Research, with each row attributed to a named source and dated — see the table below. No figure here is read from JCR itself, which is paywalled; the series comes from named third-party trackers and, where available, the publisher. AACR’s journal pages (aacrjournals.org) are blocked at the Cloudflare edge and returned HTTP 403 to every automated request CASRAI made on 23 August 2026, on every path tried. AACR’s separate society page for the journal (aacr.org) was retrievable but carries no metrics figure. Clarivate’s JCR is behind an institutional subscription. An earlier version of this page carried an aggregator figure of roughly 22.6; it is not repeated here, because it could not be attributed to a named primary source.
How to get the number yourself. The authoritative source is Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports, which sits behind an institutional Web of Science subscription — most university libraries provide it, and the lookup takes under a minute by ISSN. Clarivate’s free Master Journal List will confirm whether the journal is in the Web of Science Core Collection at all (a title that is not indexed there receives no Impact Factor), though it does not show the numeric score. CASRAI’s guide to looking up a journal’s Impact Factor walks through both steps.
What CASRAI could verify at source
- ISSN: 0008-5472 (print), 1538-7445 (online) — Crossref journal record, checked 23 August 2026.
- Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) — Crossref journal record, checked 23 August 2026.
- PubMed / MEDLINE: Currently indexed for MEDLINE; MEDLINE coverage v25n6, July 1965- — NLM Catalog record, checked 23 August 2026.
- DOAJ: Not listed in DOAJ (subscription journal) — DOAJ API, checked 23 August 2026.
- Journal Impact Factor: no figure is published on this page, because none could be attributed to a named, dated source — see the explanation above.
Cancer Research’s Journal Impact Factor by JCR data year
Clarivate issues a new Journal Impact Factor for every indexed title each June, so the figure is a property of a data year rather than of the journal. The series below runs most recent first, with the source named against every row and the date CASRAI read it. Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports is paywalled and CASRAI has not read it directly; rows attributed to a tracker are third-party readings of Clarivate’s release, not Clarivate’s own publication. Figures for the 2021 data year and earlier are shown to three decimal places because that is how Clarivate published them at the time; from the 2022 data year Clarivate rounds the JIF to one decimal place.
AACR’s own journal pages (aacrjournals.org) were still returning HTTP 403 to CASRAI on 23 August 2026, so no figure below is publisher-confirmed. The series is from BioxBio (bioxbio.com/journal/CANCER-RES), a third-party JCR tracker. The current figure is cross-checked against wos-journal.info/journalid/11778 (a third-party Web of Science tracker, confirmed on the page itself to carry ISSN 0008-5472) and the Wikipedia article for the journal, which states “According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2025 impact factor of 22.6” and cites the 2025 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2026). All three were read on 23 August 2026.
| JCR data year | Clarivate release | Journal Impact Factor | Attributed to, read 23 August 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | June 2026 | 22.6 | BioxBio; wos-journal.info; Wikipedia citing 2025 JCR (all three agree) |
| 2024 | June 2025 | 16.6 | BioxBio |
| 2023 | June 2024 | 12.5 | BioxBio |
| 2022 | June 2023 | 11.2 | BioxBio |
| 2021 | June 2022 | 13.312 | BioxBio |
| 2020 | June 2021 | 12.701 | BioxBio |
| 2019 | June 2020 | 9.727 | BioxBio |
| 2018 | June 2019 | 8.378 | BioxBio |
| 2017 | June 2018 | 9.130 | BioxBio |
| 2016 | June 2017 | 9.122 | BioxBio |
| 2015 | June 2016 | 8.556 | BioxBio |
| 2014 | June 2015 | 9.329 | BioxBio |
| 2013 | June 2014 | 9.284 | BioxBio |
| 2012 | June 2013 | 8.650 | BioxBio |
Category and quartile
Clarivate assigns Cancer Research to the Web of Science category Oncology (Science Citation Index Expanded). For the current release, wos-journal.info gives its percentage rank within that category as 95.2% (read 23 August 2026). On wos-journal.info’s own stated scale — Q1 is better than 75% of the journals in the category, Q2 better than 50%, Q3 better than 25%, Q4 the rest — 95.2% places it in Q1. CASRAI has not read the quartile in Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports itself, so treat it as a tracker-derived reading of the category position, not as a quartile quoted from JCR. The 5-year Impact Factor, a separate figure that widens the citation window from two years to five, is 15.7 for the current release, per wos-journal.info.
Which data year does 22.6 belong to? Sources on this site disagree, so here are both readings. An earlier paragraph on this page dates 22.6 to the 2024 JCR data year (2025 release). Both sources CASRAI could read on 23 August 2026 date it to the 2025 data year (June 2026 release): BioxBio labels the 22.6 row “2025 (2026 update)” and gives 16.6 for 2024, and Wikipedia states a 2025 impact factor of 22.6 citing the 2025 Journal Citation Reports. The table above follows those two sources. Nothing here has been read in Clarivate’s JCR itself, which is paywalled, so confirm the data year there before quoting 22.6 in a grant application or tenure file.
Re-check any row above against the source named beside it before quoting it in a CV, tenure file, grant application or funder report, and say which JCR data year you mean. A rising or falling series says nothing about any individual paper published in a given year — the JIF is a journal-level average, for the reasons set out elsewhere on this page.
Why this number alone is a poor stand-in for quality
Citation-tracking organizations including DORA and the CoARA coalition caution against using a journal-level metric like the JIF to evaluate an individual article, author, or grant applicant — a single highly cited paper in Cancer Research does not mean every article in that issue was equally cited, and the JIF says nothing about the quality or rigor of any specific piece of work. It is also field-relative (oncology citation norms differ from, say, mathematics) and sensitive to a journal’s mix of article types, so it should be read alongside other indicators — such as the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) or CiteScore — rather than in isolation.
Related terms
See the general Journal Impact Factor entry for the full mechanics of the metric. For comparison, see the JIF entries for other oncology- and biomedicine-adjacent titles: Journal of Clinical Investigation, Cell, and Nature. On alternative journal-level metrics, see SCImago Journal Rank (SJR).
Last verified: 16 August 2026. Clarivate refreshes Journal Citation Reports figures every June; treat any specific number on this page as time-stamped to the release named next to it, not a permanent property of the journal, and re-check the source named above after the next June release.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Cancer Research’s (AACR) current Journal Impact Factor?
The most recently confirmed figure is 22.6 for the 2024 JCR data year (2025 release). Clarivate’s current cycle covers the 2025 JCR data year (released June 2026); CASRAI could not reach aacrjournals.org/cancerres to confirm that newer figure as of 16 August 2026, so check the journal’s own metrics page or jcr.clarivate.com for the current number before citing it formally.
Is AACR’s Cancer Research the same journal as Clinical Cancer Research?
No. Cancer Research is the flagship general-oncology journal published by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and it is distinct from other AACR titles such as Cancer Discovery and Clinical Cancer Research — each receives its own separate Journal Impact Factor in the JCR.
Is the Cancer Research journal affiliated with Cancer Research UK?
No. Cancer Research, the AACR-published peer-reviewed journal, is unrelated to Cancer Research UK, the funding charity of a similar name — the charity does not publish this journal and the two should not be conflated when looking up impact-factor figures.
How is Cancer Research’s Journal Impact Factor calculated?
The JIF is a ratio: citations received in a given year to citable items (articles and reviews) the journal published in the two preceding years, divided by the number of those citable items. Clarivate applies the same calculation Clarivate applies to every journal in JCR.
Should Cancer Research’s Journal Impact Factor be used to judge an individual article or researcher?
No. DORA and the CoARA coalition caution against using a journal-level metric like the JIF to evaluate an individual article, author, or grant applicant, since a single highly cited paper does not mean every article in that issue was equally cited. It is best read alongside other indicators, such as the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) or CiteScore, rather than in isolation.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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