The ISME Journal Impact Factor

The ISME Journal is the flagship journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology and covers integrated microbial ecology. It is distinct from ISME Communications, Microbiome, Environmental Microbiology, and general microbiology titles. The online ISSN is 1751-7370. Match the full title, publisher, and identifier before transferring a metric from a directory or a nearby journal.

The abbreviated query isme journal impact factor is particularly prone to title substitution because the journal's society name and sibling journal are similar. This page answers only the exact-title metric lookup. It does not turn a broad microbial-ecology search into a recommendation that every microbiome, environmental, clinical, or sequencing study should target this journal.

Oxford Academic also reports a 2025 Immediacy Index of 1.6, Eigenfactor Score of 0.03367, and 1,785,585 full-text uses. These may be useful as separately labeled journal-level context. They are not reasons to infer that a particular dataset, field survey, model, metagenomic analysis, or host-microbe result will meet the journal's editorial threshold.

The checked primary record supports the 2025 JIF of 10.2 and 2025 five-year JIF of 13.2. It does not provide a source-audited historical series on this page. We therefore do not calculate a year-over-year change, publish a multi-year chart, or forecast the next JIF.

For formal promotion, grant, or ranking work, verify the required annual row in licensed Journal Citation Reports. A different historic number can be a valid prior value, but it should not be presented as the current record or used to claim an upward or downward trend without a verified series.

In our audit of the current Oxford Academic record, we map each displayed value to its database, year, and calculation label before using it in the answer. The named failure pattern is title-and-metric substitution: a reader copies a metric from ISME Communications, treats CiteScore as a JIF, or carries a historic directory value into a current exact-title lookup. The identity and metric-boundary tables are intended to make that error visible.

The JIF can answer a narrow record-verification question. It cannot replace the editorial question for a microbial-ecology submission: does the paper make a broadly relevant ecological contribution with evidence that supports the claimed mechanism? That question is about the research design, data, analysis, and reader consequence, not a journal average.

Community description presented as ecological mechanism. A compositional survey, correlation network, or descriptive omics result can be useful without demonstrating the process claimed in the conclusion. Make the ecological mechanism, relevant comparison, functional evidence, uncertainty, and limit on transfer visible before describing the finding as general.

Cross-field metric used as a venue-routing shortcut. The journal's scope includes diverse microbial ecology, but a clinical, purely technical, or narrow application finding can still be better served by its natural specialist reader. Scope and the central research question should lead the venue decision.

Two-day decision aggregate treated as a manuscript forecast. Oxford Academic reports median 2025 days from submission to first and final decision as two days. Those are historical journal aggregates, not a promise that an individual paper will clear assessment, peer review, revision, or publication on that schedule.

These are Manusights preparation checks based on the public scope and metric record, not claims about confidential editorial criteria. Run a microbial-ecology submission readiness check before using a metric as the reason to target the journal.

The metric does not establish an acceptance probability, required citation count, APC, peer-review speed, category rank outside the named 2025 categories, or an individual article's scientific value. A high five-year JIF or CiteScore does not remove the need to test sampling design, environmental context, functional evidence, causal interpretation, reproducibility, and the boundary of the conclusion.

Oxford Academic notes that journal metrics should not be used as a proxy for the quality of individual research contributions. That limitation is especially important when comparing work across microbial systems, methods, citation practices, and research communities.

This page was created by the Manusights editorial team after checking the current Oxford Academic record. This page helps when a reader needs to verify whether a number belongs to The ISME Journal, whether it is a current JIF, five-year metric, or CiteScore, and what the number cannot establish about a manuscript.

The page owns only the exact-title impact-factor lookup. It does not own submission mechanics, APC decisions, under-review status, acceptance-rate claims, or broad microbiology-journal selection. Those distinct reader jobs are served by The ISME Journal submission guide, the best microbiology journals shortlist, and the Microbiome submission guide.

For the journal's broader profile, use the The ISME Journal journal record. It is a navigation and scope resource, not evidence that changes the metric reported here. For a formal citation, retain the full title, metric name, metric year, and source: "The ISME Journal's 2025 Journal Impact Factor is 10.2, according to Oxford Academic."

• Match The ISME Journal, Oxford University Press, and online ISSN 1751-7370.
• Describe 10.2 as the 2025 JIF, not a 2026 citation-year value.
• Keep the 13.2 five-year JIF and 17.9 CiteScore separately labeled.
• Preserve the named category with either displayed rank.
• Use JCR for formal historical, percentile, or policy decisions.