FEMS Microbiology Reviews Impact Factor

For a review journal, the most useful signal here is not only the JIF. It is the combination of a 16.9 JIF, a 16.4 five-year JIF, and an 11.1-year cited half-life.

That is exactly what you want from a strong review venue. It means the better reviews stay useful for a long time. Authors keep citing them because they continue to organize the field well, not because they briefly caught a trend.

The very low annual output also matters. With only 33 citable items in the current JCR row, the journal is selective about what review topics and author teams it prioritizes.

The JCR row above is the authoritative impact factor on this page. Use the Scopus impact-score sequence below as an open-citation context check for FEMS Microbiology Reviews' review-journal citation curve.

Directionally, the open citation signal is up from 10.86 in 2023 to 12.08 in 2024, though still below the 2020 to 2021 peak. That pattern makes sense for a review journal. Citation cycles can move significantly depending on which topics dominate a given era, but the stronger long-run signal is the journal's durability.

That durability is exactly what the half-life shows.

The mistake is to see a high-impact review journal and assume a broad microbiology literature summary will be enough.

That is usually the wrong read. FEMS Microbiology Reviews explicitly publishes reviews on aspects of microbiology that have not been surveyed recently and expects them to be comprehensive, critical, authoritative, and useful to both specialists and general readers.

That means the journal is not rewarding volume of references. It is rewarding editorial necessity.

In our microbiology review work with FEMS Microbiology Reviews proposals, the biggest mistake is usually treating it like a normal upload journal. The journal itself says proposals may be sent to the Editor-in-Chief or an appropriate Editor, and approved proposals then receive a submission link. That changes the real question: editors are first deciding whether the topic deserves space now and whether the author team looks credible for it.

Four failure patterns recur.

The review has no distinct reason to exist now. The topic may be interesting, but if it has been covered recently or the new angle is weak, the proposal usually softens fast.

The audience is too narrow. A review that works for one subcommunity can still fail if it does not speak to a broader microbiology readership.

The manuscript is comprehensive but not decisive. This is common in drafts that collect literature carefully but do not offer a stronger organizing logic or critical stance.

The authority case is weak. Review journals at this level care about whether the proposing team looks like the right group to synthesize the topic.

If that still sounds like the project, a FEMS Microbiology Reviews submission readiness check is often more useful than another round of formatting.

The impact factor does not tell you whether the review topic has been covered too recently, whether the angle is sharp enough, or whether the proposing team has the right authority profile. It also does not tell you whether a shorter trend-style review or a narrower specialist review journal would be a better fit.

That is where most mismatches happen. The metric can place the journal. It cannot validate the proposal.

• FEMS Microbiology Reviews Under Review status