Nature Medicine's Impact Factor (JIF)

Nature Medicine’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

Nature Medicine's Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is the Clarivate-computed, journal-level citation ratio the Nature Medicine journal receives each year in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) -- citations in the JCR data year to Nature Medicine's citable items from the two preceding years, divided by that item count. Per Nature Portfolio's own journal-impact page (nature.com/nm/journal-impact), Nature Medicine's 2-year Impact Factor is 52.5 and its 5-year Impact Factor is also 52.5, both for the 2025 JCR data year (JCR release published June 2026); last verified directly against that page August 16, 2026. Nature Medicine is a distinct, separately scored journal from Nature, Nature Communications, and the other 60-plus Nature Portfolio titles published by Springer Nature -- a JIF reported for a sister journal is never Nature Medicine's own figure. 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 Nature Medicine 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 Medicine is indexed in Clarivate’s Science Citation Index Expanded and scored within the General & Internal Medicine JCR category, where it consistently ranks among the highest-scoring primary research journals in medicine.

Nature Medicine is a peer-reviewed research journal covering biomedical research with direct clinical or translational relevance — distinct in scope from Nature’s multidisciplinary coverage and from Nature Communications’ broader, open-access remit across all of science. The JIF applies only to the peer-reviewed research content Clarivate tracks, not to any editorial or news content the journal may also carry.

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

Nature Medicine’s Journal Impact Factor is 52.5, 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 Medicine (nature.com/nm/journal-impact). It appears there verbatim as “Journal Impact Factor: 52.5 (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.

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: 1078-8956 (print), 1546-170X (online) — 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 v1n1, Jan. 1995- — NLM Catalog record, checked 23 August 2026.
DOAJ: Not listed in DOAJ (subscription/hybrid journal) — DOAJ API, checked 23 August 2026.
Journal Impact Factor: 52.5 for the 2025 JCR data year; 5-year Impact Factor 52.5 — Nature Portfolio’s own Journal Metrics page for Nature Medicine (nature.com/nm/journal-impact), retrieved 23 August 2026.

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. Nature Medicine’s own selectivity and prestige make this caution especially relevant in practice: because so much weight is informally attached to a “Nature Medicine paper” in biomedical hiring and grant review, it is tempting to treat the journal’s JIF as if it described the citation performance of any specific article published there, or of the researchers who wrote it. 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 in hiring, tenure, promotion, or grant-review decisions.

Counter-example

Nature Medicine’s CiteScore (a separate Elsevier/Scopus metric using a four-year citation window and a broader document set) is not the same figure as its Clarivate JIF, and reporting one as if it were the other is a common sourcing error. Likewise, a specific highly cited Nature Medicine paper does not “have” the journal’s JIF — the metric is computed at the journal level only, never the article level — and neither does an individual author who published there, which is exactly the conflation DORA’s guidance warns against. A separate, easy mix-up worth flagging explicitly: Nature’s own JIF and Nature Communications’ JIF (18.1 for the 2025 data year, per Nature Portfolio’s own page) are each real, separately computed figures for other Nature Portfolio journals — neither is Nature Medicine’s own JIF, despite the shared publisher and shared brand name.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Nature Medicine’s current Journal Impact Factor?

Per Nature Portfolio’s own page (nature.com/nm/journal-impact), Nature Medicine’s 2-year Journal Impact Factor is 52.5, and its 5-year Impact Factor is also 52.5, both for the 2025 JCR data year (JCR release published June 2026). Clarivate updates JCR figures every June, so treat this as time-stamped to that release and verify against the publisher’s page before citing it formally. Last verified against that page: August 16, 2026.

Where should this figure be verified, and why does that matter?

Directly against Nature Medicine’s own journal-impact page at nature.com/nm/journal-impact, or against Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports (jcr.clarivate.com, institutional-subscription access). Third-party JCR-tracking aggregators and Wikipedia infoboxes frequently lag behind the current JCR release or mix up data-year and release-year labeling, which is why this page cites the publisher directly rather than a secondary source.

Is Nature Medicine’s Impact Factor the same as its CiteScore?

No. CiteScore is a separate Elsevier/Scopus metric using 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.

Does an individual article in Nature Medicine “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.

Related terms

Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the general metric this page illustrates with one journal’s current figure.
Nature’s Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — the flagship Nature Portfolio title’s separately computed JIF.
Nature Communications’ Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — a sister Nature Portfolio title’s separately computed JIF.
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 vs CoARA — comparing the two major research-assessment reform frameworks.

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