The new Journal Citation Reports have been published, also for three journals entertained by the association. As a reminder, the Journal Impact factor describes the number of cites in the present year (2020; citing sources) to items published in the previous two years (2018 and 2019; citable items) divided by the number of citable items in these two years. To avoid misunderstanding, we agree that the JIF is not an indicator of quality and it is inappropriate to use a journal-level metric as a proxy measure for individual researchers, institutions, or articles. What the Impact Factor provides is a metric of attention and visibility articles published in a journal receive. We trust our editors to ensure high quality and we are happy that the JIF reflects that these high quality articles receive the attention they deserve.

It has already been expected that all Journal Impact Factors (JIF) will show an increase this year as Clarivate adapted their way of computing the metric. From 2020 on, articles will be assigned to the year when they were published online first, not to the year they appear in a printed issue. For 2020, this means that all papers published in print in 2020 will enter the numerator, but also articles published online first in 2020, thus increasing the total number of citing sources, while the citable items remain only articles published in print in 2018 and 2019. For the years of transition, it is thus particularly important to also take other indicators (e.g., ranking within a field) into account.

The 2020 Impact Factors and ranking in the field of Social Psychology are:

European Journal of Social Psychology: 3.376 (21/65 – up from 2.415)
European Review of Social Psychology: 7.353 (4/65 – up from 3.333)
Social Psychological and Personality Science: 4.451 (10/65 - up from 4.380)

Congratulations to all editors, handling editors, reviewers and authors!