The AABC 2025 Impact FactorThe decision regarding the submission of manuscripts to journals has been quite a challenge these days, resulting in several discussions (e.g., Jahn & Tullney 2016, Figueiredo et al. 2024) that are not without criticism, for all when scientific quality comes into play (e.g., Amaral 2024). And one of the criteria used by authors is the evaluation of the periodical to which they wish to submit the result of their research. Therefore, year after year, the scientific community eagerly awaits with some anxiety for the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Published by Clarivate Analytics, the JCR presents several indexes and bibliometric information, including the Impact Factor (IF). As has been stated many times before, the IF is one way that might help to establish a journal´s influence in a particular field: the higher the IF, the more influential the papers published in that journal allegedly might turn out to become in that specific area. I use the term “allegedly” because there are several criticisms of the IF assessment (e.g., Nature 2005, Neto 2025) and there are examples of why this might not be the case (e.g., Waltman & Traag 2021). Nonetheless, the IF is still around and all editors, as well as scientists, need to take this index into consideration.
On several occasions, I have attempted to make some brief assessments on how the papers published by the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (AABC) reflect on the IF of this journal, the sole, in a broad sense, multidisciplinary periodical edited in Brazil (e.g., Kellner 2023). As has been pointed out many times, a journal’s IF in a given year is calculated by dividing the total number of citations received in that year by the journal’s articles published in the previous two years, divided by the sum of the articles (or citable items) from those two years. To blur matters a little bit further, the IF of a journal presented in the JCR is always disclosed in the following year. This means that the AABC IF released in 2025 refers to the articles of the AABC published in 2022 and 2023 cited by any journal during 2024. As is clear, not all pieces published by a scientific magazine are considered citable items. This is particularly the case for editorials, forewords, letters (in most cases), comments, notes and corrections (errata).
Considering the JCR 2024-2025 (Clarivate 2025), the IF of the AABC remained the same as the previous year, both lower than the IF-2022 (Table I). Regarding submissions, the number fell from 2021 to 2022 and has been increasing ever since (Table II). The actual quantity of papers (excluding non-citable items by JCR) published by AABC in 2022 and 2023 were 439 and 352, respectively, totalizing 791 articles. It differs from the citable articles retrieved by JCR 2024-2025: 423 in 2022 and 351 in 2023, totaling 774 articles. This means that 17 articles published by AABC in the period where the IF-2024 was calculated were not considered in the JCR 2024-2025. While annoying, this situation is not new and has been observed on previous occasions, leading to the introduction of the Missing Article Index (MAI, see Kellner 2020b). The MAI of the articles published by the AABC during 2022 and 2023 that were not considered in the JCR 2024-2025 is 0.0215 (see Table III), showing that over 2% of the articles published by the AABC were not considered. It should be noted that most citations are always expected to come from articles published in the first year of the two-year period, since, by being available for a longer period, they have greater citation potential. Regarding the AABC, 16 out of the 17 missing articles were published in 2022, whose omission could have negatively impacted the IF-2024 of this journal. It would be interesting to know the MAI of other journals and what effect it might have.
Number of articles submitted and published by the AABC (excluding editorials, forewords and letters).
Citations in 2024 of articles published in 2022 and 2023 according to the Journal Citation Reports released in 2025.
According to JCR 2024-2025, the three most cited articles in 2024 were published during 2022, with the most cited receiving 77 citations (Morrone et al. 2022), and the second (Ellwanger et al. 2022) and third (Zhang et al. 2022) most cited receiving 13 and 12 citations, respectively. This difference between the most cited article and the other two is greater than that established in a previous analysis (see Kellner 2020c). Oddly, the most cited article was classified by the authors in Animal Science, an area where there is still lots of potential for improvement (Kellner 2024).
Of the 774 articles considered by JCR 2024-2025, 409 were cited at least once, resulting in an Article Citation Factor (ACF-1, see Kellner 2020a, 2023) of 0.5284. This means that a little over half of the articles published in 2022 and 2023 were cited at least once during 2024. According to JCR 2024-2025, only 184 out of the 774 articles published were cited two or more times, resulting in an ACF-2 of 0.2377 (Table III). These numbers are slightly below the analysis done regarding the IF-2022 of this journal (Kellner 2023). The Reescalated Article Impact Factor (RAIF, Kellner 2020a) considering only the articles cited at least once in 2024, results in a RAIF-1 for the AABC of 2.159; if only articles with two or more citations were considered, the RAIF-2 of the AABC would be 3.582. In both cases, the numbers are slightly lower than the results obtained based on the JCR 2022-2023 (Kellner 2023).
From this brief overview, it is clear that the number of uncited articles published by the AABC is still quite high and has a negative impact on the journal´s IF. There is still work to be done, especially considering the special occasion when, in 2028, the AABC will complete its first centenary of uninterrupted publication. It would be nice to have better bibliometric indexes by then.
References
- AMARAL OB. 2024. Academic impact and scientific quality should not be conflated. An Acad Bras Cienc 96: e20240738. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765202420240738.
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CLARIVATE. 2025. Clarivate Unveils the 2025 Journal Citation Reports. https://clarivate.com/news/clarivate-unveils-the-2025-journal-citation-reports/ Accessed September 14, 2025.
» https://clarivate.com/news/clarivate-unveils-the-2025-journal-citation-reports/ - ELLWANGER JH ET AL. 2022. Synthesizing the connections between environmental disturbances and zoonotic spillover. An Acad Bras Cienc 94: e20211530. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765202220211530.
- FIGUEIREDO C, NEVES AAB, PIMENTEL F, PIMENTEL D, MOTA-ARAUJO HP, DE BEM AF, NETO BAD & MCMANUS C. 2024. Impact of Open Access Policy on Brazilian Science and Global Trends. An Acad Bras Cienc 96: e20231068. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765202420231068.
- JAHN N & TULLNEY M. 2016. A study of institutional spending on open access publication fees in Germany. PeerJ DOI 10.7717/peerj.2323.
- KELLNER AWA. 2020a. Development of Agrarian Sciences at the AABC with comments on impact and performance evaluations. An Acad Bras Cienc 92: e202092S1. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765202092S1.
- KELLNER AWA. 2020b. Development of Biological Sciences at the AABC. An Acad Bras Cienc 92: e202092S2. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765202092S2.
- KELLNER AWA. 2020c. A brief summary of the impact and performance of different scientific fields at the AABC. An Acad Bras Cienc 92: e2020924. DOI 10.1590/0001-37652020924.
- KELLNER AWA. 2023. The 2022 Impact Factor of at the AABC. An Acad Bras Cienc 95: e2023953. DOI 10.1590/0001-376520232023953.
- KELLNER AWA. 2024. A brief assessment of the influence of Animal Science in the Impact Factor of the AABC. An Acad Bras Cienc 96: e2024963. DOI 10.1590/0001-376520242024963.
- MORRONE JJ, ESCALANTE T, RODRÍGUEZ-TAPIA G, CARMONA A, ARANA M & MERCADO-GÓMEZ JD. 2022. Biogeographic regionalization of the Neotropical region: New map and shapefile. An Acad Bras Cienc 94: e20211167. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765202220211167.
- NATURE. 2005. Not-so-deep impact. Nature 435: 1003-1004. DOI 10.1038/4351003b.
- NETO BAD. 2025. Forget About the Journal Impact Factor and Other Scientometric Indicators. J Braz Chem Soc 36(3): e-20250008. DOI 10.21577/0103-5053.20250008.
- WALTMAN L & TRAAG VA. 2021. Use of the journal impact factor for assessing individual articles: Statistically flawed or not? F1000Research 9: 366. DOI 10.12688/f1000research.23418.2.
- ZHANG Y, YE GG, ZHAO JS, CHEN YB, KONG LD, SHENG CX & YUAN LY. 2022. Exosomes carried miR-181c-5p alleviates neuropathic pain in CCI rat models. An Acad Bras Cienc 94: e20210564. DOI 10.1590/0001-3765202220210564.
