Lancet Infectious Diseases Impact Factor
Lancet Infectious Diseases impact factor is 29.5. See the current rank, quartile, and what the number actually means before you submit.
Associate Professor, Clinical Medicine & Public Health
Author context
Specializes in clinical and epidemiological research publishing, with direct experience preparing manuscripts for NEJM, JAMA, BMJ, and The Lancet.
Journal evaluation
Want the full picture on Lancet Infectious Diseases?
See scope, selectivity, submission context, and what editors actually want before you decide whether Lancet Infectious Diseases is realistic.
A fuller snapshot for authors
Use Lancet Infectious Diseases's impact factor as one signal, then stack it against selectivity, editorial speed, and the journal guide before you decide where to submit.
What this metric helps you decide
- Whether Lancet Infectious Diseases has the citation profile you want for this paper.
- How the journal compares to nearby options when prestige or visibility matters.
- Whether the citation upside is worth the likely selectivity and process tradeoffs.
What you still need besides JIF
- Scope fit and article-type fit, which matter more than a high number.
- Desk-rejection risk, which impact factor does not predict.
- Timeline and cost context.
How authors actually use Lancet Infectious Diseases's impact factor
Use the number to place the journal in the right tier, then check the harder filters: scope fit, selectivity, and editorial speed.
Use this page to answer
- Is Lancet Infectious Diseases actually above your next-best alternatives, or just more famous?
- Does the prestige upside justify the likely cost, delay, and selectivity?
- Should this journal stay on the shortlist before you invest in submission prep?
Check next
- Acceptance rate: ~12%. High JIF does not tell you how hard triage will be.
- First decision: 2-4 weeks. Timeline matters if you are under a grant, job, or revision clock.
- Publishing cost and article type, since those constraints can override prestige.
Quick answer: Lancet Infectious Diseases has a 2024 JCR impact factor of 31.0, a five-year JIF of 26.9, and a Q1 rank of 1/137 in Infectious Diseases. That is a top-of-category position. The practical question is not whether the number is elite. It is whether the manuscript has enough clinical, public-health, or policy consequence to justify one of the field's most selective editorial screens.
Lancet Infectious Diseases impact factor at a glance
Metric | Value |
|---|---|
Impact Factor | 31.0 |
5-Year JIF | 26.9 |
JIF Without Self-Cites | 30.4 |
JCI | 7.53 |
Quartile | Q1 |
Category Rank | 1/137 |
Total Cites | 39,986 |
Citable Items | 142 |
Total Articles (2024) | 120 |
Cited Half-Life | 5.3 years |
Scopus impact score 2024 | 8.68 |
SJR 2024 | 5.446 |
h-index | 304 |
Publisher | Elsevier |
ISSN | 1473-3099 / 1474-4457 |
That rank places the journal in roughly the top 1% of its JCR category by position.
What 31.0 actually tells you
The first signal is prestige. Lancet Infectious Diseases is sitting at the top of the Infectious Diseases category.
The second signal is normalized strength. The JCI of 7.53 is extremely high, which matters because infectious-disease citation cultures vary widely across epidemiology, virology, antimicrobial resistance, and clinical therapeutics.
The third signal is reliability. The JIF without self-cites is 30.4, which is very close to the headline number.
The fourth signal is recency. The five-year JIF of 26.9 is a little below the current JIF, which usually suggests the journal is benefiting from more recent attention and fast-moving clinical or policy relevance.
Lancet Infectious Diseases impact factor trend
The JCR row above is the authoritative impact factor on this page. For the longer directional view, the table below uses the open Scopus-based impact score series as a trend proxy.
Year | Scopus impact score |
|---|---|
2014 | 7.66 |
2015 | 7.18 |
2016 | 6.69 |
2017 | 7.92 |
2018 | 7.44 |
2019 | 6.67 |
2020 | 6.88 |
2021 | 15.81 |
2022 | 13.21 |
2023 | 9.72 |
2024 | 8.68 |
Directionally, the open citation signal is down from 9.72 in 2023 to 8.68 in 2024. That is not surprising for an infectious-disease title after the extraordinary pandemic citation cycle. The more important point is that the official JCR signal remains extremely strong.
Why the number can mislead authors
The common mistake is to treat Lancet Infectious Diseases as a generic high-impact infectious-disease destination.
That misses the actual editorial question. This journal wants work with broad clinical or public-health consequence, not only a good study in an infectious-disease niche.
Papers often miss here when they are:
- strong but too local in geography or health-system context
- methodologically sound without a clear practice or policy implication
- too focused on one narrow pathogen lane without broader consequence
- better suited to a specialty ID or microbiology journal
The number says the journal is elite. It does not say the journal is a home for every good infectious-disease paper.
How Lancet Infectious Diseases compares with nearby choices
Journal | Best fit | When it beats Lancet Infectious Diseases | When Lancet Infectious Diseases is stronger |
|---|---|---|---|
Lancet Infectious Diseases | Broad clinical, stewardship, and policy-relevant ID work | When the paper changes how the field thinks across settings | When the manuscript has unusually strong global or practice consequence |
Clinical Infectious Diseases | High-end clinical ID with strong specialty authority | When the work is excellent but more specialty-owned than globally framed | When the story has broader cross-setting reach |
Journal of Infectious Diseases | Strong infectious-disease science with deeper specialty fit | When the paper is good but less policy-forward or less globally broad | When the manuscript has a stronger clinical or public-health megaphone case |
PLOS Medicine | Broad medical relevance with policy and global-health overlap | When the framing is more general medical or health-systems oriented | When the infectious-disease readership fit is the sharper editorial home |
That comparison is usually the real submission decision. The metric alone does not solve that choice.
What pre-submission reviews reveal about Lancet Infectious Diseases submissions
In our pre-submission review work with manuscripts targeting Lancet Infectious Diseases, three patterns show up repeatedly.
The study is good, but too local. Single-system and single-setting papers often underestimate how much the journal cares about broader relevance.
The abstract does not make the practice implication obvious enough. Editors read quickly, and hidden consequence is often treated as weak consequence.
The manuscript is better owned by a specialty journal. Many sound papers belong in CID, JID, or a pathogen-specific venue because the true readership is narrower than the authors claim.
If that sounds familiar, a Lancet Infectious Diseases submission readiness review is usually more valuable than another cosmetic revision.
The information gain that matters here
The current Lancet institutional access materials add a useful non-JCR signal: the journal markets itself as the world-leading infectious-disease journal, highlights the 31.0 impact factor, and also cites a CiteScore of 42.6 with a 2/357 Scopus position in infectious diseases.
That matters because it shows the journal is not only highly cited by JCR logic. It is also built around broad infectious-disease visibility across the Scopus ecosystem.
The practical implication is that the journal rewards papers that travel well across clinicians, researchers, and policy audiences.
How to use this number in journal selection
Use the impact factor to place Lancet Infectious Diseases correctly. It is a top-end target for globally relevant clinical infectious-disease work.
Then ask the harder question: would the paper matter outside the original setting?
That usually means checking whether the manuscript:
- changes treatment, prevention, stewardship, or interpretation
- matters beyond one local cohort or institution
- makes the clinical or public-health consequence obvious in the abstract
- supports broad claims with a sufficiently strong evidence package
If the answer is yes, the metric supports the target. If the answer is no, the number can flatter a paper that belongs in a narrower owner.
What the number does not tell you
The impact factor does not tell you whether the result generalizes, whether the policy or practice consequence is visible enough, or whether the true audience is actually a more specialized infectious-disease journal.
Those are the real editorial screens.
Submit if / Think twice if
Submit if:
- the paper has broad infectious-disease relevance
- the clinical or public-health implication is explicit
- the study can travel across settings or populations
- the evidence package supports a high-level conclusion cleanly
Think twice if:
- the result is mostly local
- the paper is strong but too specialty-narrow
- the consequence is argued only in the discussion
- a more targeted ID journal fits the real audience better
Bottom line
Lancet Infectious Diseases has an impact factor of 31.0 and a five-year JIF of 26.9. The stronger signal is the combination of category-leading rank, very strong normalized influence, and a specific global clinical-public-health editorial identity.
That makes it a serious target for the right paper. It does not make it the right target for every strong infectious-disease manuscript.
Frequently asked questions
Lancet Infectious Diseases has a 2024 JCR impact factor of 31.0, a five-year JIF of 26.9, and a Q1 rank of 1 out of 137 journals in Infectious Diseases.
Yes. By JCR position, Lancet Infectious Diseases is ranked first in Infectious Diseases and sits among the most selective clinically oriented journals in the field.
No. The journal favors work with broad clinical, public-health, or policy consequence that matters beyond one local setting, one narrow pathogen story, or one specialty corner.
The common misses are studies with too-local scope, findings whose policy or practice implication is not explicit, and manuscripts that are sound but better owned by a specialty ID journal.
Use it to place Lancet Infectious Diseases correctly as a high-end global clinical infectious-disease target, then judge whether the manuscript really changes infectious-disease thinking, care, or policy at that level.
Sources
Reference library
Use the core publishing datasets alongside this guide
This article answers one part of the publishing decision. The reference library covers the recurring questions that usually come next: whether the package is ready, what drives desk rejection, how journals compare, and what the submission requirements look like across journals.
Checklist system / operational asset
Elite Submission Checklist
A flagship pre-submission checklist that turns journal-fit, desk-reject, and package-quality lessons into one operational final-pass audit.
Flagship report / decision support
Desk Rejection Report
A canonical desk-rejection report that organizes the most common editorial failure modes, what they look like, and how to prevent them.
Dataset / reference hub
Journal Intelligence Dataset
A canonical journal dataset that combines selectivity posture, review timing, submission requirements, and Manusights fit signals in one citeable reference asset.
Dataset / reference guide
Peer Review Timelines by Journal
Reference-grade journal timeline data that authors, labs, and writing centers can cite when discussing realistic review timing.
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Where to go next
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Same journal, next question
- Is Lancet Infectious Diseases a Good Journal? Impact Factor, Scope, and Fit Guide
- Lancet Infectious Diseases submission guide (2026)
- Lancet Infectious Diseases Review Time: What Authors Can Actually Expect
- How to Avoid Desk Rejection at Lancet Infectious Diseases
- Lancet Infectious Diseases Cover Letter: What Editors Actually Need to See
- Lancet Infectious Diseases Formatting Requirements: The Submission Package Guide
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Supporting reads
Want the full picture on Lancet Infectious Diseases?
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