Science Impact Factor

The impact factor tells you that Science papers are cited at one of the highest rates in all of scientific publishing. The 785,913 total cites figure is one of the largest in science, reflecting decades of influential publications. The five-year JIF (49.7) running above the two-year (45.8) indicates that Science papers continue to accumulate citations over time, which is the hallmark of durable research impact.

Science publishes roughly 800 research articles per year across all of science. That extreme selectivity drives the high JIF. Only papers with genuinely broad consequence make it through the editorial filter.

For authors, 45.8 is not really a comparison number. It is a confirmation of what everyone already knows: Science is in a class with Nature and almost nothing else.

AAAS publishes a family of journals under the Science brand. If your paper doesn't clear the Science bar, one of these may be the right alternative, and editors sometimes suggest transfers during review.

Science Advances is the most common fallback for papers that narrowly miss the Science bar. It's still AAAS-branded, still broad in scope, and still competitive (IF 12.5). Science Translational Medicine and Science Immunology are strong alternatives for clinical translation and immunology work, respectively.

Most submissions are desk-rejected within the first 1-2 weeks. If your paper passes the editorial screen, expect 4-8 weeks for peer review. Science uses 2-4 reviewers per paper, and the editorial board synthesizes their feedback into a decision. Accepted papers move to production quickly, with online publication typically within 2-3 weeks of final acceptance.

The full trajectory tells a clear story: Science's IF grew from ~31 in 2012 to ~42 by the late 2010s, spiked to 63.7 during the pandemic citation surge in 2021, and has since normalized to 45.8. That's still roughly 50% higher than where it stood a decade ago, reflecting both the journal's increasing selectivity and the broader growth in citation volume across science. The current 45.8 is the number to use for planning.

Science achieves its JIF through several factors:

• Ultra-selective editorial process: less than 5% of submissions are published
• Broad readership that spans all scientific disciplines
• High citation density from papers that are widely referenced across fields
• Prestige effect that drives additional citations by signaling importance
• Mix of research articles and reviews, both of which attract high citation rates

Science editors want work that changes how scientists think about a problem. That typically means:

• Discoveries with consequences beyond one subdiscipline
• Papers that resolve long-standing questions or open new directions
• Experimental or theoretical advances with broad scientific reach
• Studies where the significance is obvious to a non-specialist scientist

What usually fails: technically strong work that only matters to specialists, incremental advances even in important areas, and papers where the broader significance has to be heavily argued rather than being self-evident.

Submit if:

• the work is genuinely paradigm-shifting or field-defining
• the significance extends well beyond one subdiscipline
• the paper would be recognized as important by scientists outside your field
• you have the evidence package to survive the most demanding editorial triage

Think twice if:

• the clinical consequence is limited to one specialty
• the discovery is important but primarily within one subdiscipline
• Science Advances, Nature Communications, or a top specialty journal is a more realistic target
• you are uncertain whether the paper meets the bar (that uncertainty is usually informative)

Nature (IF 48.5) and Science (IF 45.8) are functionally equivalent in prestige. Both have similar impact factors, similar selectivity, similar review timelines, and similar scope. The practical differences are subtle:

• Different editorial preferences and slightly different reviewer pools
• Nature publishes more papers per year than Science
• Some subfields have historically been better represented in one journal
• The editorial cultures have different personalities, though both are intensely selective

For most authors, the choice between Nature and Science comes down to editorial interactions, past experience, and which journal's recent coverage better matches their paper's subject area.

In our pre-submission review work with manuscripts targeting Science and other broad-scope flagships, three failure patterns recur consistently across fields:

The "broad significance on paper, specialized in practice" problem. Authors write significance statements claiming cross-field impact, but the actual results section reveals a highly specialized contribution. Science editors are generalists, they evaluate whether a biologist, a physicist, and a chemist would each independently find the result important. In manuscripts where the significance statement requires two or more sentences of field-specific context to land, the paper hasn't cleared that bar. Generic language about "advancing the understanding of [field]" flags this failure immediately. The question isn't whether the result is important to your community; it's whether it's important to scientists who don't share your subfield identity.

The "important to us, incremental to them" pattern. A paper can be genuinely exciting within its discipline and still be incremental from the outside. The most common version we see: a molecular mechanism that resolves a long-standing question in one subfield but doesn't change how people outside that subfield think about anything. This is not a quality problem, it's an audience-match problem. Science Advances (IF 12.5) exists precisely for this type of paper. Authors who try to reframe a strong subfield paper as a broad scientific event by changing the introduction rarely succeed; Science editors read deeply enough to see what the paper actually is.

The repackaged specialty-journal submission. We regularly see papers that were submitted to a top specialty journal, received a desk rejection or rejection after review, and then arrived at Science with a broadened introduction. Science editors recognize this trajectory. The tell is usually a paper where the biological or chemical framing is genuinely strong but the cross-field consequence is tacked on rather than intrinsic to the study design. Science Advances is the more honest target for many of these papers, and submitting there directly with Science Advances framing gets a better outcome than submitting to Science with inflated framing and then cascading.

Some practical context for researchers considering Science:

• The vast majority of submissions are desk-rejected within days
• Only papers with exceptionally broad or surprising findings pass the initial screen
• Review timelines are typically compressed once a paper enters review
• If accepted, the paper reaches a genuinely broad scientific audience
• Rejection from Science does not mean the paper is weak; it means the bar is extraordinary

For most scientists, a realistic submission strategy involves targeting Science only when the work truly has paradigm-shifting potential, while having a clear fallback plan for Science Advances, Nature Communications, or the top journal in your specific field.

• Whether your specific result meets the editorial bar
• How to frame the paper for maximum impact with Science editors
• Whether the work would get more traction in a top specialty journal
• How long the review process will take if the paper enters review
• Whether your specific paper will perform at the journal's average citation level

A Science framing and significance check can pressure-test your manuscript against what Science editors actually select and identify framing issues before you invest time in a submission that may be desk-rejected.

Science is not a normal journal-choice problem. Authors almost never need help deciding whether 45.8 is strong. They need help deciding whether their manuscript really belongs in a venue where the paper must read as important to scientists outside the home discipline.

That is why this page should function as a decision memo, not a rankings card. The impact factor tells you the journal is among the most visible in the world. It does not tell you whether the paper clears the cross-field narrative bar, the editorial filtering logic, or the risk-adjusted value of trying Science before a strong fallback.

At this level, the JIF mostly confirms category. It does not separate realistic submissions from aspirational ones. The better filter is whether a non-specialist scientist can understand, remember, and repeat the paper's significance without a long explanation from the author.

• It helps when you are distinguishing Science from strong but much more accessible broad-science journals.
• It helps when the manuscript genuinely has field-spanning consequence and an evidence package to survive extraordinary scrutiny.
• It misleads when authors use prestige arithmetic to avoid admitting the paper is better suited for Science Advances, Nature Communications, or a top specialty venue.
• It misleads when the main importance lives inside one subfield, even if that subfield is important.

• Science submission guide
• Science submission process
• Is Science a good journal?

Science's Scopus profile tells the same story as its JCR numbers. The 2024 CiteScore is 48.4 and the SJR is 10.416, both placing Science near the top of multidisciplinary journals. The SNIP of 6.623 confirms that Science's citation performance isn't just a function of field size, it's genuinely exceptional even after normalizing for citation behavior. For committees or institutions that rely on Scopus-style indicators, these numbers reinforce what the impact factor already shows: Science is one of a handful of journals at the absolute peak.