Journal impact filter

Search results in Cite and on the Find papers page can show a Journal impact line, such as "Journal impact 4.2". The Journal impact filter uses the same figure to hide results from journals under a minimum you pick. This page explains what the figure is, and what the filter does and does not do.

What the figure means

Journal impact is the average number of citations per paper over two years: the citations in the last two years to the journal's papers from the two years before. Papero takes it from OpenAlex, where it is called the two-year mean citedness, and shows it with one decimal.

It is not the Journal Impact Factor. That figure is Clarivate's and comes from other data, so the two numbers differ for the same journal.

To read this explanation in the app, press the small information button beside the line or beside the filter, About journal impact.

When a result has no figure

The line appears only when OpenAlex has the figure for the journal, so some results have none:

• Papers from a venue that OpenAlex does not list as a journal, such as a conference or a repository, have no figure.
• Journals that OpenAlex has no figure for have none. Now and then Papero also cannot fetch the figure in time for a search.
• A paper you look up by its DOI, PMID, arXiv ID or ISBN has none.
• Sources in your library, on the Library and In this document tabs of Cite, have none.

Filter results by journal impact

1. Run a search in Cite or on the Find papers page. See Find papers.
2. In Cite, press Filters. On the Find papers page the filters are already in the row above the results.
3. Next to Journal impact, pick 1+, 3+ or 10+.

Results whose journal is under that minimum disappear, and so do results with no figure at all. A line under the results says how many the filter hides, such as "3 results hidden by the journal filter". Press Show all beside it, or pick Any, to turn the filter off.

While the filter is on, it counts in the number on the Filters button.

What the filter does not do

• It does not run a new search. It only hides results already on screen, so changing it does not use a paper search. The other filters, such as Cited by, run the search again.
• It does not touch identifier lookups. A paper you looked up by its identifier always shows, because you asked for that paper.
• It is not saved. It is not part of a document's Citation preferences…, so it starts at Any each time you open a document or the Find papers page.
• It says nothing about a single paper. The figure describes the journal. Citation habits also differ a lot between fields, so the figure is most useful to compare journals within one field. To find papers that are cited often themselves, use Cited by or sort by Most cited.

In Workflows

When you set up a Workflow, the same Journal impact filter sets which journals the papers it finds may come from. See Workflows.