Nature Communications Impact Factor: 18.1 (2025)

Nature Communications’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

Nature Communications' Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is the Clarivate-computed, journal-level citation ratio Nature Communications receives each year in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) -- citations in the JCR data year to the journal's citable items from the two preceding years, divided by that item count. Per Nature Portfolio's own journal-impact page (nature.com/ncomms/journal-impact), Nature Communications' directly-sourced 2-year Impact Factor is 18.1 (5-year: 18.9) for the 2025 JCR data year (JCR release published June 2026); last verified directly against that page August 16, 2026. Clarivate updates this figure every June, so treat the number as time-stamped to a specific release, not a fixed property of the journal. Per DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) and CoARA guidance, this journal-level figure should not be used as a proxy for the quality of any individual article published in the journal or the merit of its authors.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 4 Sept 2026

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. Nature Communications, an open-access, multidisciplinary journal published by Springer Nature since 2010, is indexed in Clarivate’s Science Citation Index Expanded and receives a JIF on that basis.

Nature Communications’ Impact Factor in 2026: what the named sources actually say

Nature Communications’ Journal Impact Factor is 18.1, for the 2025 JCR data year — the release Clarivate issued in June 2026. The source is Nature Portfolio’s own Journal Metrics page for Nature Communications (nature.com/ncomms/journal-impact). It appears there verbatim as “Journal Impact Factor: 18.1 (2025)”, retrieved 23 August 2026. That is the publisher restating Clarivate’s number for its own title — not a third-party JCR-tracking aggregator and not a Wikipedia infobox, either of which can lag behind or drift from the release Clarivate actually issued.

Sources disagree, so here are both. A second live Nature Portfolio page for the same journal, nature.com/ncomms/journal-information, still states a 2-year impact factor of 15.7 (2024). That is the previous JCR data year rather than a competing measurement of the same year, and the journal-information page has simply not been refreshed. Use the 18.1 (2025) figure, and be aware that a reader landing on the other page will see 15.7.

Clarivate republishes the JCR every June, so this figure is current only for the 2025 data year. Re-check it at the publisher’s page or in JCR itself before putting it in a CV, tenure file, grant application or funder report — and say which data year you mean when you cite it.

What CASRAI could verify at source

ISSN: 2041-1723 — Crossref journal record, checked 23 August 2026.
Publisher: Springer Nature — Crossref journal record, checked 23 August 2026.
PubMed / MEDLINE: Currently indexed for MEDLINE; MEDLINE coverage v1, 2010- — NLM Catalog record, checked 23 August 2026.
DOAJ: Listed in DOAJ; record added 11 January 2016 — DOAJ API, checked 23 August 2026.
Journal Impact Factor: 18.1 for the 2025 JCR data year; 5-year Impact Factor 18.9 — Nature Portfolio’s own Journal Metrics page for Nature Communications (nature.com/ncomms/journal-impact), retrieved 23 August 2026.
JCR Quartile: Q1 (top quartile) in the Multidisciplinary Sciences category for the 2025 data year — cross-corroborated across multiple independent JCR-tracking aggregators (including impactfactorforjournal.com); CASRAI could not independently confirm the exact category rank against jcr.clarivate.com directly, which sits behind institutional-subscription access, so treat the quartile placement as reported, not primary-source-confirmed.

Historical trend: Nature Communications’ Impact Factor over time

Nature Communications’ 2-year Impact Factor has moved considerably release to release rather than climbing steadily. The figures below are cross-corroborated across multiple independent JCR-tracking aggregators (including impactfactorforjournal.com, bioxbio.com and journalmetrics.org); CASRAI verified only the current 2025-data-year figure (18.1) directly against Nature Portfolio’s own page, so treat the older years as REPORTED-tier and re-check any single historical figure at jcr.clarivate.com before citing it formally.

JCR data year	2-year Impact Factor
2017	12.4
2018	11.9
2019	12.1
2020	14.9
2021	17.7
2022	16.6
2023	14.7
2024	15.7
2025	18.1

The pattern: a sharp rise through 2020-2021 (consistent with the pandemic-era citation surge that lifted many biomedical and multidisciplinary titles industry-wide), a dip through 2022-2023 as those pandemic citations aged out of the two-year window, then a rebound to a decade-high 18.1 in the 2025 data year. A multi-year swing like this is normal for a large, highly cited multidisciplinary journal and should not be read as a forecast for the next JCR release.

How Nature Communications compares across the Nature Portfolio

Nature Communications is one of dozens of separately indexed titles under the Nature Portfolio umbrella (Springer Nature), and each receives its own independently computed JIF — a high or low figure at one title says nothing about a sibling journal’s score. A same-JCR-data-year snapshot for a few well-known Nature Portfolio titles:

Journal	2-year JIF (2025 JCR data year)	JCR quartile / category
Nature (flagship)	Not quoted here by CASRAI house style — the figure changes every June; check JCR or Nature’s own metrics page directly	Q1, Multidisciplinary Sciences (consistently one of the highest-ranked titles in the category)
Nature Communications (this page)	18.1	Q1, Multidisciplinary Sciences
Communications Biology	approximately 5.8 (reported, not independently confirmed)	Q1
Scientific Reports (see the Impact Factor look-up guide)	approximately 4.9 (reported)	Q1, Multidisciplinary Sciences
Nature Medicine	approximately 79.6 (reported)	Q1, General & Internal Medicine

The wide spread above — from single digits to nearly 80 — illustrates why comparing a JIF across categories is misleading even within one publisher’s own portfolio: General & Internal Medicine and Multidisciplinary Sciences have very different citation norms and category sizes, so a “higher number” does not mean “more rigorously reviewed” or “more important.” Compare a journal’s JIF only against other journals in its own JCR category.

Why this number alone is a poor stand-in for quality

Citation-tracking organizations including DORA, the CoARA coalition, and Clarivate itself caution against over-relying on a single journal-level metric to judge an individual article or researcher. A large multidisciplinary journal’s JIF is heavily shaped by a small number of highly cited papers and by field-level citation norms (life sciences and physics articles accumulate citations faster than mathematics or some social-science subfields), so the same score means different things depending on what is being compared. DORA’s core recommendation is not to eliminate the JIF, but to stop using it as a proxy for the quality of a specific paper or the merit of an individual researcher’s work — a distinction that matters when Nature Communications’ relatively high JIF gets cited in tenure, promotion, or grant-review contexts as if it described any one article published there, rather than the journal’s two-year citation average as a whole.

Counter-example

Nature Communications’ CiteScore (a separate Elsevier/Scopus metric using a four-year citation window and a broader document set) is not the same figure as its JIF, and reporting one as if it were the other is a common sourcing error. Similarly, an individual highly cited article published in Nature Communications does not “have” the journal’s JIF — the metric is computed at the journal level, not the article level, which is precisely the conflation DORA’s guidance warns against.

Related terms

Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s current figure.
CiteScore — Elsevier/Scopus’s competing journal-level metric, different window and denominator.
h-index — an author-level metric, not a journal-level one.
DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) — the reform commitment behind the over-reliance caveat above.
DORA signatory
Nature’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the flagship journal’s own separately computed figure.
Nature Medicine’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — a same-portfolio clinical title, for scale.
Communications Biology’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — a same-portfolio open-access sibling.
DORA vs CoARA — comparing the two major research-assessment reform frameworks.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Nature Communications’ current Journal Impact Factor?

Per Nature Portfolio’s own page (nature.com/ncomms/journal-impact), Nature Communications’ 2-year Impact Factor is 18.1 and its 5-year Impact Factor is 18.9, both for the 2025 JCR data year (JCR release published June 2026). Clarivate updates JCR figures every June, so treat any specific number as time-stamped to that release and check the journal’s own page before citing it in a formal context. Last verified against that page: 23 August 2026.

Is “IF” the same thing as JIF for Nature Communications?

Yes — “IF” is simply the common shorthand for Journal Impact Factor (JIF), the same Clarivate/JCR metric described on this page. It is not a different or separate score.

Is Nature Communications’ Impact Factor the same as its CiteScore?

No. CiteScore is a separate Elsevier/Scopus metric that uses a four-year citation window and a broader set of source documents, unlike the JIF’s two-year window and citable-items denominator. Reporting one figure as if it were the other is a common sourcing error.

How is Nature Communications’ Journal Impact Factor calculated?

The Journal Impact Factor 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 this same mechanical calculation to every journal indexed in JCR, including Nature Communications.

Does an individual article in Nature Communications “have” the journal’s Impact Factor?

No. The JIF is computed at the journal level, not the article level, so a single highly cited paper does not inherit or carry the journal’s score. DORA’s guidance specifically warns against using a journal-level metric like this one as a proxy for the quality of an individual article or researcher.

How often does Nature Communications’ Impact Factor change?

It can change every year: Clarivate releases updated JCR figures annually, each June, so the current figure is specific to that year’s release rather than a fixed, permanent property of the journal.

What is Nature Communications’ JCR quartile?

Nature Communications sits in Quartile 1 (Q1) — the top quartile — of the Multidisciplinary Sciences JCR category for the 2025 data year, per cross-corroborated JCR-tracking aggregators. CASRAI could not independently confirm the exact category rank against jcr.clarivate.com directly (institutional-subscription access), so treat the quartile placement as reported rather than CASRAI-verified.

How does Nature Communications’ Impact Factor compare to other Nature Portfolio journals?

Each Nature Portfolio title has its own separately computed JIF, and they vary enormously by field: Nature Communications is 18.1 (2025 data year, Multidisciplinary Sciences), while a same-portfolio clinical title like Nature Medicine is reported around 79.6 (General & Internal Medicine) and open-access siblings like Communications Biology and Scientific Reports sit in the single digits. Compare journals only within the same JCR category, not across the portfolio by raw number.

Where should this figure be verified?

Directly against Nature Communications’ own journal-impact page at nature.com/ncomms/journal-impact, or against Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports (jcr.clarivate.com, institutional-subscription access). Third-party JCR-tracking aggregators and Wikipedia infoboxes can lag behind the current release or mislabel the data year a figure belongs to, which is why this page cites the publisher directly.

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