Chemical Reviews Impact Factor

Among Chemistry, Multidisciplinary journals, Chemical Reviews ranks in the top 1% by impact factor (JCR 2024). This ranking is based on our analysis of 20,449 journals in the Clarivate JCR 2024 database.

The five-year JIF (67.5) running well above the two-year (55.8) is the clearest indicator that Chemical Reviews papers are long-term reference documents. A single review can accumulate thousands of citations over its lifetime as researchers across chemistry cite it for context, methodology, and field framing.

The fluctuation is more volatile than most journals because Chemical Reviews publishes a relatively small number of articles per year (around 210 citable items). With small volume, a handful of exceptionally well-cited reviews can move the JIF substantially. The 2021 peak and subsequent decline are consistent with pandemic-era citation patterns across all of chemistry.

For authors who have been invited to write a Chemical Reviews article, these year-to-year fluctuations are mostly academic. What matters is that the journal consistently ranks #1 in its category and that a Chemical Reviews publication is a career-level achievement for most chemists.

The 55.8 number is not comparable to primary research journal JIFs. Review articles are cited far more frequently than original research papers because they serve as comprehensive entry points to a field. When researchers need to cite background or establish context, they often cite a review rather than 20 individual primary papers.

This means that comparing Chemical Reviews (55.8) to JACS (15.6) as if both numbers describe the same kind of citation performance is misleading. JACS publishes primary research that gets cited for specific results. Chemical Reviews publishes comprehensive reviews that get cited as field overviews. Both are excellent journals. They serve different functions, and their JIFs reflect those different functions.

In our pre-submission review work evaluating Chemical Reviews proposals, three failure patterns generate the most consistent declined proposals. The journal commissions most articles through direct invitation; unsolicited proposals are accepted but the majority are declined.

Topics without a sufficiently broad expert community. ACS Chemical Reviews' published guidance on proposals notes that proposal authors should identify "geographically diverse and internationally recognized experts" as potential reviewers, and that if it is difficult to identify more than five such experts, authors should "reconsider if the topic is of broad importance and interest to the Chemical Reviews readership at large." This is a direct editorial signal: proposals on topics where the expert community is small or regionally concentrated are declined because they fail the breadth test. Chemical Reviews publishes reviews that define and reshape entire subdisciplines; reviews that would primarily be cited by a narrow specialist community belong in a specialty journal's review section or Accounts of Chemical Research.

Proposals that summarize existing literature rather than advance a framework. The journal commissions reviews that serve as authoritative field syntheses (typically 50 to 100+ pages) that become the standard reference for their topic. Proposals that describe "a comprehensive survey of the literature on X" without articulating a new organizational framework, a synthesis of previously disconnected areas, or a perspective that reframes how the field thinks about the problem are declined. Chemical Reviews reviews are evaluated on whether they change the conceptual landscape of their area, not just on whether they are thorough. The proposal needs to articulate what conceptual work the review will do, not just what it will cover.

Poor timing relative to field readiness. Chemical Reviews' ~2-month proposal review process includes assessment by external experts who evaluate whether the field is ready for a definitive review at this moment. Proposals submitted too early, before enough primary research has accumulated to support a comprehensive synthesis (or too late) after another review has covered similar territory recently, are declined on timing grounds. The strongest proposals land when a topic has reached an inflection point: enough new findings have accumulated to require a new synthesis, but the review has not yet been written. Tracking recent review coverage in ACS Chemical Reviews and Chemical Society Reviews before submitting a proposal is an essential step. A Chemical Reviews proposal gap identification and timing check can assess whether the gap identification and scope are positioned appropriately.

Last verified: March 2026 against Clarivate JCR 2024 data.

Chemical Reviews articles are typically invited by editors. If you've been invited to write for Chemical Reviews, the impact factor is largely informational. You already know the journal is prestigious. The practical questions are about scope, timeline, and how comprehensive the review needs to be.

If you have not been invited, the JIF does not help you submit an unsolicited paper, because the journal generally does not accept them. For your primary research manuscripts, the relevant comparison is between JACS, Angew, and specialty journals, not between your work and a Chemical Reviews review article.

It does not tell you whether your research belongs in a review journal or a primary research journal. For most chemists, the practical question is not "how does Chemical Reviews compare to JACS?" It is "should my primary research target JACS, Angew, or a specialty journal?" A JACS vs Angew vs specialty journal fit check can help clarify where a primary research manuscript fits best.

Chemical Reviews at 55.8 is one of the clearest examples in the entire queue where article type matters more than raw rank. This is an invitation-led review journal, so the metric is measuring the citation behavior of comprehensive chemistry syntheses, not the average performance of primary research papers. That is why the number sits far above most research titles. Readers cite Chemical Reviews when they need a field map, not just a single experimental result.

That distinction matters because searchers often use this query to answer the wrong question. If the real question is where to send a primary chemistry manuscript, the Chemical Reviews number is not a useful benchmark. If the question is how elite a commissioned chemistry review venue can be, then 55.8 tells the truth. The five-year JIF being even higher reinforces that these articles become long-lived reference points rather than short-cycle citation spikes.

Use the number as a guide to editorial model, not just prestige. Chemical Reviews is valuable because it commissions reviews that reshape how chemists understand a field. That is why the page exists: to stop authors from comparing a review-journal JIF to a research-journal JIF as if they answered the same decision.